As a result of the 2008 Great Recession, a majority of state public education systems have been recovering from budget cuts for more than a decade now. The status of Wisconsin’s recovery is still up for debate.
Less than one in five states have fully recovered from cuts to per-student appropriations — a sum of money designated per student — of the 2008 recession. Eleven states have failed to increase funding to even the lowest point during the recession.
However, improvement across the country has been uneven and irregular. Wisconsin is one of nine states that has recovered per-student appropriations, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association report.
The portion of taxpayer funding of the UW System is near $1 billion, accounting for nearly a sixth of the total annual budget. Due to this, Wisconsin has frequented the top 15 states in per capita education funding for years.
UW-Madison, the System’s flagship university, received about $445 million in state appropriations last year, which comprises a little over 17 percent of the state’s overall budget.
Compared to other midwestern states for per capita spending, Wisconsin fares very well. Michigan was ranked 12th, Indiana 24th and Minnesota 29th.
However, Chancellor Rebecca Blank has spoken out multiple times about the state’s lack of taxpayer funding and the “challenges” it poses.
“The first challenge was a set of budget cuts that reduced our state funding by almost $90 million,” Blank said, referencing the 2015-’17 budget cuts. “About $50 million of those cuts was absorbed by units around the university. It was not an easy task but I think these were implemented in a way that minimized their effects as much as possible. The remaining state cuts were offset by expansion in other revenue sources.”
The university has come under criticism from public officials due to its substantial cash balances, which were discovered in 2013. This drew disparagement from Wisconsin’s government because the UW System was actively pursuing more state funding while also increasing tuition.
This led to former Gov. Scott Walker freezing in-state tuition rates and directing the UW System to use saved funds to balance their new budget cuts. The UW System had an unrestricted fund amount of $907 million in 2018, Walker’s last year as governor.
The most recent Grapevine report found Wisconsin’s monetary support of higher education has increased by 4.2 percent in 2018-’19. Wisconsin ranked fourth in percentage change within the country as its spending was 41 percent above the fiscal years of 2014 to 2019, compared to 18.3 percent nationally.
The Grapevine report’s data is not adjusted for inflation, however. SHEEO Senior Policy Analyst Sophia Laderman said Wisconsin is not doing well for this reason.
SHEEO is an organization based on membership with the purpose to work with higher education systems. The UW System is a member of SHEEO, which presents a possible conflict of interest regarding the funding.
Public education systems are the most dependent on funding from students and their families, more so than they have ever been, the SHEEO report found. Currently, 27 states rely on tuition to fund more than 50 percent of their income, a new pattern across states since the 2008 Recession.
Due to the heavy dependence on tuition to fund the majority of a university, tuition costs have skyrocketed, the SHEEO report stated.
“At a time that we have said that it is a necessity, not a luxury, we are pricing education as a luxury,” Louisiana’s Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said.
state news
