A friend who is a WI resident has reported that faculty are leaving the university due to dissatifaction with the way the governor is cutting funding. If true, does this affect your interest in attending the school, particularly as an OOS applicant?
Are you asking as an applicant?
No, I am a parent. My son would probably choose to attend regardless, should he be accepted. Since posing the question, I have since read some posts from last year on this topic and would have deleted my post but was unable to do so.
Yes, if true this would give us pause. Have you seen anything published to confirm this trend is occurring. I would need more than the friend of an internet person heard… 
It is a real phenomenon. Other universities have noticed and are trying to hire away faculty. To some extent this goes on all the time. But it’s more intensified than usual. The question is how many will actually leave and will they be easily replaced? The university appears to have come up with money for large preemptive raises to try to prevent losing star faculty. Several universities are trying to hire my husband right now, all who approached him. In his department there are at least 7 others he knows of who are being similarly courted. Below are links to a few articles on the topic. It isn’t just about money and tenure and not feeling valued. There is a lot more going on in WI now that is demoralizing to many citizens, professors or no. Firing all those DNR scientists, forcing the state park system to fund itself, vilifying and defunding Planned Parenthood, dismantling the civil service protections,… the list is too long to recount. We have a son who is a freshman at UW-Madison and he really loves it. Not trying to discourage anyone from enrolling with this info.
http://www.aft.org/news/wisconsin-universities-shaken-anti-academic-policies
Are faculties leaving? No idea because I don’t really know how the higher education system works. However, some of the classes that used to be offered are now slowly disappearing (the less popular ones) so yes, there are impacts from the budget cuts of the State. I don’t think it is an issue people should be overlooking due to their school pride now.
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That said, I would still full heartedly say attend the school. It really shouldn’t impact you much unless you are going into a very not-so-popular subfield. So, for most undergrads, you won’t feel much if not any difference 
… except your tuition will rise pretty exponentially (an exaggeration but somewhat true) due to this budget cut.
And before anyone argues with me about tuition increase, do note even the university showed a rough increase due to the budget cuts (since instate is getting a tuition freeze). So… just accept that part if you are willing to attend.
Excellent information @celesteroberts. Thank you very much. Certainly a key factor to weigh in. There is so much to consider. Minn is reportedly about to significantly increase their OOS tuition, WI having faculty retention issues, IL…bankrupt. etc etc
I don’t remember all of this as being so hard when I was a enrolling.
@celesteroberts. My son was just admitted to UW and is thrilled, to say the least! He plans to major in international affairs and would like to study Turkish language as well. Do you have any insight regarding how these particular departments may be affected?
He was also admitted to IU Bloomington, which is home to the Turkish flagship program and is also putting tons of money into expanding their School of Global and International Studies. They have even stated that they’re aggressively recruiting 25 new faculty members at this time. Can’t help but to wonder if some of UW’s professors will end up there?
My son’s first choice is UW, but my husband and I are a little nervous about the budget cuts. We will be visiting UW for an accepted student day, and hope to get some more info then. But any input you may have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
@Candlewoodgal For what it’s worth, my UW kid does a lot of poli sci/international affairs and is looking at various languages including Turkish, Farsi and Arabic. There has been no noticeable impact on his academic experience, either in terms of number of sections, course offerings or advising, and the language offerings remain comprehensive.
I wouldn’t hesitate to send my kid again to UW. We know a few faculty in L&S at UW and, while there has been frustration with Walker, our particular slice of friends are not looking to move. One narrow set of anecdotal experience, I realize. We are in state in Indiana but once my kid stepped onto campus at Madison and knew it was for him, and never looked back. Bloomington is a charming small town, but has always seemed like a few blocks of great restaurants to me, and doesn’t hold a candle to Madison. Greek life is much bigger at IU than at UW, and that can affect student experience in different ways. In our experience – despite the raging against admissions over on the decisions thread – we have found UW to be exceedingly well-organized across the board, from admission, to registration, advising, and academically. Early on, we ran into multiple administrative frustrations with IU which affected our perception of our instate flagship. Congrats to your son with his choices.
Notice most of the links above are from sources that advocate a position. My student is having a great experience at UW with the faculty and has not noticed any change. Most of what you read is still speculation and political posturing from at or around the time the changes were being made. UW has been very successful in recent years with private fundraising which is more sustainable and reliable long term.
@Midwestmomofboys. Thanks for your’re response!!! Definitely reassuring to hear that the int’l affairs and language programs remain strong and that your son is satisfied with his experience thus far. All of your posts are very informative and helpful.
Just read the first link in post #4 and it said that all International affairs faculty chose to remain at UW, even though Minnesota attempted to recruit 5 of them! Should have taken a look at that earlier!!!
I don’t know anything about international afairs, but it seems you found your answer and it looks reassuring, right?
Here is a document that compares turnover in UW system in 2014 with the previous 3 years. Not much change. Somewhat fewer retirements. Slightly more resignations, but not a lot:
http://profs.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Report-on-faculty-turnover.pdf
The changes are slow and incremental. Budget has been shrinking for many years. So departments have shrunk in concert with that. That forces class sizes to increase with fewer sections offered. This is a fact, though I don’t have a link to that data at the moment. I will hunt around to see if I can find something. H tells me his dept ( a large service dept) is about 2/3 the size it was many years ago. I can see the change clearly in my younger son’s current classes compared to his older brother’s classes 10 years ago. And my H talks about it a lot. But your child will not notice these things. The classes are what they are and he won’t know it was ever any different. It’s a state school and many state schools have large classes. But there was a time when UW was proud of their ability to offer relatively small class sizes.
So they dropped for credit gym classes a couple of years ago. Well, most people won’t know there ever were any classes like that, so won’t miss them. Last week the Union decided to liquidate the Hoofers horse property and sell the horses. That won’t matter to you if your child isn’t planning to be on the equestrian team. On the other hand, the music department is finally going to get a wonderful new performance space- 100% funded by private donors, which will be a huge boon to that department when it is built. There is always a lot of renovation and construction. New union, renovated old union, new gym in the SE to replace the old one in the next couple of years, and many other projects.
One of the problems caused by the long term budget issues which is not visible to most undergraduates is the low stipend paid to grad students relative to peer institutions. This makes attracting the best students very difficult. Grad students need to worry about how to pay their living costs during those years. I don’t know that that impacts undergrads. They are often taught dicussion and labs by grad students, but I can’t know if a better grad student makes a better teacher. Anyway, this is not a new problem, just same old.
My son is very happy at UW. Really loves it. He chose to attend over several other fine schools and has not regretted it.
@celesteroberts. Thanks for getting back to me! I’m glad to hear that the latest cuts are not devastating the campus or affecting the student experience. My son absolutely LOVED UW when he visited and is so excited to have been accepted. On to figuring out the financial part… : )
Thank you celesteroberts. Good information. Unfortunately up sizing classes and cutting programs are definitely red flags. OOS tuition being what it is we will be closely examining all pluses and minuses to try and get to the best experience for the dollar .
My daughter is lucky in that she likes all the places she has acceptances to, so we have options to exclude places with too many red flags.
Wis is a great school but lots to consider!
@Bughunter87 This may not necessarily be unique to UW. I was told that UC Berkeley is facing budgetary issues due to recent state restrictions on the number of OOS and international students (who pay significantly higher tuition) they can admit, as well as freezes to in-state tuition. My alma mater, Penn State, just completed a huge (raised over $2B) fundraising campaign that I believe was partially motivated by reductions in state funding.
According to the NSF, UW has either the 3rd or 4th highest R&D expenditures of any US university, at over $1.1B (billion with a B) per year. That’s more than Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Duke, etc. I am personally not too worried about a decline in the quality of UW, at least not in the short term
Every Big Ten school EXCEPT for Nebraska is in the top 45
I got accepted to UW. Will probably go here since it’s the best school I got into – although I must say I feel as if I only got in because of budget cuts. There’s absolutely no way they would have let me in before the cuts. I’m looking to transfer after a year at UW because of these cuts and everything that’s wrong with UW. I know UW just wants my sweet delicious out of state money, that’s the only reason I got accepted. I wouldn’t be surprised if a record number of students got accepted. I’m also willing to be there will be a massive fall in prestige over the coming years as Scott Walker cuts the only thing of value to the lame state of Wisconsin. I could definitely see UW’s top 50 spot on the US News rankings go straight out the door as fewer people want to go there since there’s no money at the school. I bet when I’m there many professors will leave for better jobs. It’s either UW or U of Maryland, and I’m heavily weighing both right now. UW has the prestige, but probably not for long. Maryland is a pretty good school and will probably be more prestigious and less expensive out of state in a few years when everything UW has to offer collapses and Scott Walker pats himself on the back. I bet Scott Walker gives the finger to babies just because he can. I don’t want UW to become the Detroit of flagship public schools, but as long as Scott Walker and his weird looking nose are in office, it’s not looking good.
@cornguy. As a parent of UW student, Becky Blank has done an excellent job of managing throughout the budget cuts. Morgridges made something like a $100 million matching grant, which resulted in over $200 million for faculty retention, chairs etc. UW is a world class university. I’m no Walker fan, quite the opposite. But UW remains a top university, with top programs across the curriculum. The percentage of OOS students has been modified to increase from 27% to 30% of the students, hardly a dramatic change in the student body. So relax and celebrate your acceptance to an amazing place.