Wisconsin Legislature to Slash UW's Funding

<p>Wisconsin</a> legislative committee votes to slash UW funding - TwinCities.com</p>

<p>Sounds like these rubes in the Wisconsin legislature don’t understand the difference between a cash balance and a budget surplus, probably aided and egged on by shoddy journalism. It’s entirely possible to have cash on hand that is not yet spent, yet to have most or all of that cash obligated to known future expenditures.</p>

<p>For the sake of the good people of Wisconsin, hopefully they’re not trying to model themselves after our government in Illinois. Our in-state tuition sure feels like OOS!</p>

<p>BC – after reading the article, it seems to me that the university “hid” surpluses from the legislature. That is not right. Cash on hand is fine, but it seems like the university did not report it as such.</p>

<p>The thing I liked best from the article is the periodic reporting the school will now have to do. I’d like to see all state schools have to do this. I don’t see any reason why a state university shouldn’t have to justify it’s receipt of state funding by showing the government/taxpayers what it’s doing with their money, particularly in instances like this where there have been tuition increases several years in a row.</p>

<p>“Hid” may be extreme but they certainly did not highlight it. It is only shown in the annual audited financials–not in normal annual budget. While about half was already pre-spent a sizable amount of around $500 million and growing was not. Hard to justify when tuition is going up by similar amount. I hope they (UW admins) learned a hard lesson from this. Hopefully the lasting harm is minimal. WI Republicans never had much for the UW anyway as they saw it as a liberal hotbed. Not really wrong on that.</p>

<p>Ok, hid may be strong, but when even the Democrats were not happy about this, it is not a question of “rubes” or shoddy journalism. Apparently the UW had more reserves than the state. That to me does not sound right. I hope kids dont get hurt by this, and all is does is force UW to spend some reserves.</p>

<p>Yes, I was very unhappy they did not spend it on those that were paying the tuition by hiring more faculty etc. It just takes way too long to do somethings in universities–esp hire new tenure track faculty which often takes 2-3 yrs before they are in place. I have major issues with the way most Us are run–no sense of urgency. Nobody is in a hurry to make any decisions and everyone wants to be consulted. I’m more in favor of the strong leader models. Discussions were fine when there were maybe 50 total faculty. Not today.</p>

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<p>Can’t agree with that, barrons. If you hire someone with tenure, you’re basically committing to pay that person’s salary and benefits, at competitive rates, for life. That’s not a small institutional commitment. If that new hire underperforms or causes friction in the school or department, it could plague you for decades. Making rash hiring choices because of inadequate screening is a far greater danger than an academic-paced careful search, which, yes, can sometimes take two or three years because of the way the academic cycle works; if you don’t find and land the right person in this year’s cycle, you pretty much need to wait until next year. This isn’t like the private sector where basically you’re hiring at-will employees who you can bounce in a few weeks if things don’t work out, and who can leave their present employer often with as little as two weeks’ notice. An academic can’t just up and leave in the middle of an academic year; to do so would create chaos.</p>

<p>Now the truth is, when it comes to hiring and firing adjuncts–non-tenured, non-tenure-track people who typically work on short-term, often year-to-year contracts–deans and department chairs (“strong leaders”) often do have a lot more unilateral decision-making authority. And that’s generally fine with tenured faculty—they don’t want to be bothered by those decisions, because in their view not so much is at stake. But I don’t think hiring a bunch of short-term adjuncts to do work previously done by tenured and tenure-track faculty is a long-term solution, either. If the core faculty is strong, adding adjuncts can supplement that strength, but hiring adjuncts to replace core faculty is cannibalizing your core strength.</p>

<p>I understand those reasons and some are even good but in today’s world 2-3 years is just too long. There must be better ways to make that cycle shorter. Just because it was always done that way is not really a good reason. Or as you indicated, they could have hired one year appt people to at least reduce any sequence roadblocks and offer more and smaller sections until permanent searches could be done. You just do not leave big piles of unspent cash sitting around in a state that tends to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo howls with an admin at the state level that has no apparent appreciation for higher ed.</p>