C55K22, your concerns are valid and well-founded. When you imagine what might happen in the UW system once the rules on tenure have been weakened, consider that the WI legislature has banned some state employees from discussing climate change or even using the words.
See, for example: http://www.politicususa.com/2015/04/10/koch-republican-state-bans-climate-change-discussion.html
Or that in in the next budget they just eliminated over half of the DNR(Dept. of Natural Resources) scientist positions, most involving work in areas Republicans consider unnecessary(psst! c-l-i-m-a-t-e c-h-a-n-g-e)
.:http://www.wisconsingazette.com/wisconsin/wisconsin-republicans-fire-dnr-scientists-working-on-research-related-to-climate-change-and-polllution.html
Many Republican legislators are deeply hostile to the university and its professors and mission, which they consider a liberal cesspool. Some of the notable fair-minded ones have retired due to the stress and fatigue and loss of any semblance of bipartisan work in government: http://wpt.org/Here_and_Now/dale-schultz-his-retirement-legislature. The employees of UW’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies must be feeling especially vulnerable. Ditto those in Atmospheric Studies Dept.
But others should worry also. Our Republican legislators often fret about professors working on ‘frivolous’ research, whether controversial or not. They pick some obscure projects which they don’t understand that seem laughable to them, to hold up as examples of the waste in higher education and the need to cut money. Instead of taking the broader view that the ability to do research unrestricted by ideology about practicality and political matters is just what leads to great work, great schools, and human progress. They are very narrow-minded and would happily come in and micromange to turn UW into a trade school. It’s hard to say just who will be targeted, but they are chomping at the bit to get started, you can be sure, and the result will be a diminished university.
WRT money, budgets have been cut for many years and that continues. This is accompanied by a tuition freeze so that there is no easy way to make up the lost money. Last year there was a cut to benefits to all employees that amounted to almost 10% of salary. No raises for many years, except for targeted high value employees. There are many small ‘loss of resources.’ Over the years, the level of cleaning and maintenance done on campus, inside and out, has deteriorated gradually as budgets are cut and cut.
There will be some attrition of faculty, though most are very attached to the place and it takes a lot to get them to move. More, it will be increasingly difficult to replace faculty who retire with equivalent caliber new hires as the university becomes a less welcoming and supportive place for professors to work.
We are in-state and my S15 chose to attend UW-Madison this fall. I encouraged him strongly to consider UMN-TC and other schools where he was accepted, that these days have more support and seemingly a brighter future than UW. I hope I am proved wrong in my pessimism and that things turn around. This uberconservative stranglehold on government cannot last forever. But as some have remarked already, it is much harder to rebuild what is torn down, than to maintain what you have in place already.