The University of Wisconsin-Platteville will close their Baraboo Sauk County campus at the end of the 2025-26 school year due to low enrollment, the university announced Friday.
Only 126 students enrolled for the fall semester when the campus initially prepared for 350. Just seven years ago, when the branch merged with UW-Platteville in 2018, nearly 500 students were enrolled.
Baraboo is the eighth branch campus to close since 2022, when the UW-System ordered UW-Platteville’s other branch campus in Richland Center to close.
UW-Platteville Chancellor Tammy K. Evetovich said in a statement the decision to close Baraboo wasn’t made lightly, but they need to focus efforts to best serve the region and the students.
“Student success is at the heart of our mission,” Evetovich said in the statement. “We are providing additional support and resources to ensure students can transition smoothly to our main campus to complete their programs or find the path forward that best meets their needs.”
Operations will end on May 22, 2026. UW-Platteville will allow students currently enrolled at the Baraboo campus to transfer to its main campus, and the university said they will honor the Baraboo tuition rate for those students next fall. UW-Platteville said they are also developing plans for the branch faculty and staff, but specific details have not been released.
Blame laid on lagging state funding
Rep. Karen DeSanto, D-Baraboo, expressed her disappointment on the closure in a statement Friday and blamed the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“This is part of a greater trend of closing 2 year campuses that have suffered at the hand of nearly a decade of insufficient funding in the state budget due to Republicans’ lack of investment in the Universities of Wisconsin,” DeSanto said in the statement.
While Gov. Tony Evers initially proposed $856 million toward the UW System for the 2025-27 budget, he and Republican lawmakers agreed on $256 million instead, the largest state funding increase in 20 years.
The state currently provides 20% of the UW System’s budget, half of what it provided a few decades ago. A recent study ranks Wisconsin at 46th nationally in higher education affordability.
UW System’s string of branch closures
The Baraboo Sauk campus closure will be the eighth UW System branch to close or downsize since 2023 due to low enrollment. UW-Platteville Richland, UW-Milwaukee at Washington County and UW-Oshkosh Fond du Lac closed in 2024. UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha and UW-Oshkosh Fox Cities closed this past spring.
UW-Stevens Point Wausau will relocate near Northcentral Technical College in fall 2026. This comes as fewer high school graduates pursue college degrees, instead turning toward technical programs that will prepare them for the workforce.
In 2018, the UW System’s four-year universities took over the 13 UW Colleges, now known as branch campuses, in order to consolidate efforts amid declining enrollment.
Since, some faculty at branch campus faculty said the merge hasn’t worked as intended because universities haven’t helped enough with restructuring of the campuses, instead prioritizing recruiting for the main campus at the expense of the branches and complicating the transfer process.
After this spring, five branch campuses will remain including UW-Eau Claire Barron County, UW-Green Bay Manitowoc, UW-Green Bay Sheboygan, UW-Stevens Point Marshfield and UW-Whitewater Rock County. All except UW-Green Bay Manitowoc also face declining enrollment, though there haven’t been any reports of their closures in the near future.
