Make College Affordable Again!
Not even cows are sacred in Wisconsin, anymore. They’re being blamed for global climate change and funky ground water. But at least three sacred cows remain: The Packers, deer hunting season, and — among progressives — the University of Wisconsin.
Dare question UW system spending and you are labeled a poor man south of Richmond. Who can’t sing. And fodder for progressive enemies lists.
“GOP leaders saw fit to cut yet another $32 million from the system because it supports diversity and equity programs. At least we now know who the real con artists are,” Dave Zweifel condemns at The Capital Times. Um, teaching that “downplaying white advantage” is racist, as DEI guru Robin DiAngelo instructs, is NOT teaching history, black or white.
Others might credit Wisconsin Republicans for making college more affordable. After all, they did freeze tuition the past 10 years — not that Dane County’s progressive voice would ever divulge.
Brother, can you spare a student loan?
It now transpires that 10 of the 13 UW system schools have structural deficits. To cope, Platteville is closing its satellite Richland Center campus. Enrollment at UW-Milwaukee’s satellite campus in West Bend sits at 332, down from 1,117 in 2010. Its Waukesha campus has seen enrollment drop to 790 from 2,535 in 1988. Stevens Point is looking at the liberal arts. Oshkosh is cutting about 200 non-faculty staff and administrators and furloughing others. The cuts amount to about 20% of university employees.
The 26-campus system is projected to reach a $60.1 million structural deficit by the end of 2023-24, according to system president Jay Rothman. Don’t skip over that sentence. The University of Wisconsin System is teetering under the weight of 26 campuses, including satellite campuses!
But the system keeps adding more bureaucrats — 189 in diversity, equity and inclusion, alone. Republicans want to cut that kind of fat — $32 million worth.
Bucky is still good bang for the buck. In-state tuition is the 4th-lowest of the 14 conference schools; only Michigan and Northwestern rank higher for academics.
Spending up, enrollment down
It’s industry wide. “Colleges spend like there’s no tomorrow,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Students foot the bill for flagship state universities that pour money into new buildings and programs with little pushback.”
The nation’s best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators.
The Wall Street Journal did not audit Wisconsin’s public university system, so we did the best we could with Ol’ Sparky, our Eisenhower-era mainframe. The UW System 2022-23 budget increases by $275.2 million (or 4.2%) to $6.87 billion. The system budget is up 44% in 12 years. Student enrollment? I get two figures for 2010: 157,752 and 173,393, from different sources. Whichever, enrollment for Fall 2022 was 127,865 — down by a fifth from the lower of the two 2010 numbers.
→ According to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and the University of Chicago, 56% of Americans no longer believe a four-year college degree is worth it. (More here.)
Democrats twitch when Pavlov’s school bell rings. If colleges are spending too much money, they raise taxes. Joe Biden, the current President, wants Joe the Plumber (R.I.P.) to pay $1.6 trillion dollars in student loan forgiveness for Beardo the Weirdo’s (P.J. O’Rourke, R.I.P.) grievance studies degree.
Blaska’s Bottom Line Quiz: Student loan forgiveness only subsidizes profligate spending. Our Econ 101 Cliff’s Notes says: If that degree isn’t worth the money, don’t subsidize it! (Also, if the glove does not fit … get a different one.)
Blaska Policy Werkes 
6 responses to “Who is looking at the UW’s books?”
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/08/30/who-is-looking-at-the-uws-books/ […]
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Who are the real con artists?
Let’s toss it over to Glenn Harlan Reynolds (“The Higher Education Bubble.”) to flesh that out a tad:
(bolds/caps/italics mine throughout)
“Even as the once-mighty University of California system slashes programs and raises tuition, it has created a new systemwide ‘vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.’
“This is on top of the already enormous University of California diversity machine, which, as Heather Mac Donald notes, ‘includes (but likely isn’t limited to):
*the Chancellor’s Diversity Office,
*the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity,
*the assistant vice chancellor for diversity,
*the faculty equity advisors,
*the graduate diversity coordinators,
*the staff diversity liaison,
*the undergraduate student diversity liaison,
*the graduate student diversity liaison,
*the chief diversity officer,
*the director of development for diversity initiatives,
*the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity,
*the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues,
*the Committee on the Status of Women,
*the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion,
*the Diversity Council,
*the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center,
*the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and,
* the Women’s Center.”
“While the UC system loses top cancer researchers to Rice University, it is creating new chaired professorships in, you guessed it, diversity studies.
“Likewise, in North Carolina, UNC-Wilmington is combining the physics and geology departments to save money while diverting more funding to campus diversity offices.”
Reynolds’ book was published in 2012, so his research was compiled several years previous; has it gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse?
Oy; we’ve gone from bad to diverse! (H/T GOOD DOG HAPPY MAN)
The Gotch
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If I were you, I’d be pissed off too. It appears you learned nothing in all of those economics and accounting courses you took in the UW system.
You got half the narrative right – spending on higher education is out of control. West Virginia University, Penn State and Rutgers are the best examples. The people of New Jersey, for example, are subsidizing the Rutgers athletic program to the tune of $200 million per year.
The same thing that happened to Scott Walker’s investment in community colleges (it ended like the Foxconn fiasco – I don’t remember you being outraged at their high dropout rate) will happen at West Bend, Waukesha, Stevens Point and Oshkosh campuses. The dramatic demographic changes coming to the college age population ensures they will die a slow death.
You failed this analysis because you left out the revenue portion of the balance sheet. I will not bore you with all the numbers, but the UW System generates $30 billion (your $32 million is chicken feed) on an annual basis. Just ask Eric Hovde how much of that pie he collects every year.
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You have not assailed my point, that being that Wisconsin Republicans are responsible for reining in costs at the UW system whereas Joe Biden and Tony Evers want to subsidize profligate spending by bailing out foolish student debt and building up what amounts to political bureaucracy. I have no opinion on the need for a new engineering building except that it is expensive. I should have noted that the tuition freeze comes off after this year.
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No, do bore us with the numbers, David G. Provide a detailed breakdown of which UW departments generate what portion of that $30B. That revenue number is selective at best is without that context.
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GO CUBS GO
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