@mackinaw: I hope you are right…But as Governor Walker has supposedly stated, “Wisconsin doesn’t need a world class university” and “just a halfway decent university will be fine” worries me.
@QuantMech: Which universities do you mean by “other universities” which think its a good time to raid Wisconsin…
@barrons: Times Higher Education, especially for Engineering and Technology. and also QS Rankings
@bluebayou: I was talking specifically about undergraduate Engineering and Technology, as I plan to major in Computer Engineering
@bclintonk: Where did u get that information about the international students…?? And I was talking about Undergraduate Engineering rankings…
@Gator88NE : But it is true that all websites shows UW-Madison in a general decline. I coudn’t find a single website where UW-Madison’s rankings have improved…
Adwaya, based on conversations with my colleagues, I mean pretty much any university that is in the top 50-100 universities has faculty who are thinking of raiding someone from Wisconsin. Much higher odds of success than prior to Gov. Walker’s pronouncements.
Adwaya, every single one of those rankings is based far more on stories, moods, and fashion than on facts. Not that they are totally fact-free, but ratings and rankings are subjective, often based on “reputation,” which includes rumors, stories, etc. I mentioned in my previous post that UW’s resources are constrained. It’s also true of almost every other higher educational institution.
The Wisconsin economy hasn’t recovered jobs or grown as much as neighboring states such as Minnesota and Michigan. I don’t want to get far into the politics of it, but perhaps this fact is one of the reasons that the current governor dropped out early from the competition to be a nominee for US President.
At the same time, I’ll admit that I’m a “partisan” when it comes to UW-Madison. It will do more than just survive the current administration in the state capitol.
@Adwaya Because a few schools move up, doesn’t mean UW-Madison is in decline. 
UW is a Public (High) research university. Most of those attempting to recruit (raid) faculty from UW will also be large research universities. UF is one school that’s currently recruiting, as it’s focuses a significant amount of (state) funding toward new faculty and research.
On the other hand, I’m sure UW does it’s share of recruiting.
The end result of most of this recruiting at UW, is that the recruited faculty member stays at UW, but gets a raise. Good for faculty, bad for UW’s budget.
@adwaya – Gov Walker proposes a budget, the legislature votes on it. Walker has a specific political agenda, which affects not just UW, but also public unions etc. At the same time, he is not the Chancellor of UW. Chancellor Blank has been quite proactive about managing through the budget reductions and has emphasized that the first priority is finding cuts on the administrative, not academic side, through greater efficiencies and consolidation. There is another thread on the UW board about impact of budget cuts where I noted that the Morgridges (who have already given substantially to UW), gave $100 million in a match, which has resulted in more than $200 million specifically for the purpose of retaining UW faculty. UW has spent $8 million this year (which goes to faculty salary and other support) to keep faculty who had offers from competing universities, and is running about an 85% retention rate, consistent with prior years. While many schools are interested in getting UW faculty, there is no “run on the bank” of faculty. The money is there to keep them if they are inclined to stay. That being said, salaries at UW have been compressed for years, so this is not a new phenomenon.
A department like History, or Computer Science, or the College of Engineering, are not at risk of disappearing. UW is one of the biggest research juggernauts in the country. Department rankings may fluctuate somewhat, but UW’s Engineering will be highly regarded. My kid at UW has many friends in Engineering, and they have no problem getting great internships and jobs after graduation.
Do your research by looking at the departments you are interested in and various schools, and avoid rankings which are designed to fluctuate in order to generate traffic for an online or print medium. Most public universities fare poorly on UW News etc. because the methodology favors private university structures. No one would seriously argue that Berkeley or Michigan is not a top research university, and yet in the world of UW News, Berkeley is ranked 20, behind Brown, Vandy and Wash U.
An early poster- post #5- states Whitewater and “Oshgosh” (Oshkosh?) have the “quality professors”. Totally disagree. Those two UW system campuses are at/near the bottom of the UW system. They get the least qualified students, Madison the most qualified. The Madison flagship has top notch, caring professors- eons ago and recently. Professors teach the courses at UW- TA’s lead discussions and supervise labs. btw- before talking about quality the poster needs to check on the material covered in comparable courses. When a friend taught at UW-O she was to cover far less material than would be covered at major U’s. At the flagship UW students (especially in the Honors program) get to spend time in grad labs and take top ranked grad school courses as undergrads. There is no comparison of academics between the flagship and the other state schools.
And to add my support for @wis75 statement about the quality of the teaching faculty at UW. My own household is a dual-academic family, and we have friends and colleagues at UW. The teaching/research split is a false dichotomy. Many faculty with a strong research portfolio – so those who are tenured – savor the experience of sharing their discipline with undergrads. A top researcher is not, by definition, a disengaged teacher. Usually the opposite. And kids at UW benefit from the experience of learning from faculty who are tops in their field.
My kid who is a double major has never had TAs teaching a class – leading discussion section for a lecture course, yes, but teaching the course, never. And please remember, for those who get all antsy about TAs, – these are Ph.D. candidates in the field. They are not random, unqualified people. They are UW Ph.D. students preparing to enter the field themselves and, given how many UW departments are highly ranked – these are extremely well-qualified Ph.D. candidates who will go onto to get good university jobs. They are often in their 20s, so sometimes more approachable, than faculty members, and my kid has not had a bad one – he reports they have ranged from fine to amazing. Meanwhile, he has developed close relationships with faculty in both his departments, and they regularly write recommendations for internships etc. They know him well, and he has benefited from their professional expertise and networks.
So please, the sky is not falling. If a student wants a smaller learning environment, then UW may not be the right place for them. But a student who is exhilarated by the educational opportunities at UW, and the opportunity to learn from and work with great faculty, would be well-served at UW.
“I can tell you that people at other universities feel this is a good time to raid Wisconsin, to hire away excellent faculty members who are there.”
I can second this. I have an old friend on the tenured faculty at UW-Madison. Competitors are sniffing around a lot more than usual.
Yes, other premier universities are sniffing around trying to get UW faculty. At the same time, UW has been successful in keeping its faculty, current retention rate of faculty who have competing offers is 85%, which Chancellor Blank reports is higher than UW’s usual retention rate. Morgridge’s match has raised $250 million to keep faculty.
http://www.wrn.com/2015/09/morgridge-matching-gift-to-uw-exceeds-expectations/
It is great that Madison has been able to keep 85% of its faculty with other offers. In my department the retention rate is lower than that. However, you will note that it costs money to keep the faculty who have outside offers–more than if other universities had not been head-hunting, or if the faculty at UW, Madison had not been mentioning to colleagues that they would consider other offers.
Our current governor has done real damage to the reputation of our state and university system. Fortunately, our university will outlast our governor.
State public universities don’t go into “decline” (or rise) because of who’s the governor, it has much more to do with the state’s economy and population. Wisconsin’s economy/population has been fairly steady, it’s been ranked about 20th in GDP and population for years.
If, for some reason UW-Madison starts to drop in the rankings as compared to other high research public universities (which it hasn’t done), it likely has more to do with other schools improving, than UW-Madison going into “decline”.
Savings tend to come from “service courses” - composition classes have two more students per section, so no one really notices except the grader/instructor, then two more but no one notices again, for instance, and the cap allows for 2 more if need be… pretty soon there are 25-30% more students enrolled, which in a composition course means the course isn’t taught the way it used to, with fewer assignements and drafts. Hence the “world class to halfway decent” comment from Gov.Walker.
I can confirm the “raiding” of UW faculty though.
The governor’s move has meant that to retain them the university has to promise to pay them more, which isn’t all that savvy.
What Gov. Walker and the legislature has done is alert other universities that UW faculty may be more interested in competing offers than they would have previously. So, another school puts together a generous offer, and the UW faculty member brings it back to their own department, who now has to match or beat that offer to keep them. As a dual academic family, we are well aware that using competing offers to increase your salary at your home institution is how academics get raises (because otherwise, its usually 1-3% cost of living raise).
Since more UW faculty are now getting interest from other schools, the price tag for keeping those faculty at UW went up, because more are getting competing offers which must be matched to keep them. Has cost $8 million this year. As I understand the Morgridge’s matching gift, which brought in over $200 million to UW, those funds are for faculty retention.
I realize that such is a popular refrain with Univ workers, but is there really any hard data to show that UW faculty are being poached at a higher rate than under prior Administrations? The UC system in California, for example, is a direct competitor to UW, and Calfiornia has its own budget problems; still. In fact, UC has had it budget cut much sooner than UW, but yet all but one campus is ranked in the top 100 Universities. Other state Unis are also seeing $$ cutbacks. Michigan receives a very small portion of its budget from the State; as a result, it has high tuition, but has still been able to maintain its lofty prestige ranking in a not-growing/shrinking state. Budget reductions just ain’t happening in Wisconsin.
Tenure-track faculty will always move to a similar place where they can earn tenure. And some tenured faculty will always take a look-see at a tenured position at a higher-ranked (dept) private school. Just like its hard for undergrads to turn down offers to HYPSM, the same is true for top faculty. The research $$ is just too good to pass up. Publics just can’t compete at that level.