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Some proponents of the NBP are asking a reasonable question: If not the New Badger Partnership, then what? How to cope with the pending massive cut to UW funding without hiking tuition and getting a nice new toolbox? Good question. First, begin by convening experts (scholarly experts, not only your fellow administrators) with competing viewpoints and ask them to review the relevant documents and make proposals. Don't hire an outside expert for $3 million-- heck that's more than the annual budget for many departments! Second, make information on current spending widely available and accessible and ask for input. Take that input seriously. Don't promise people ice cream with sprinkles and cherries on top for telling you what you want to hear. Third, consider the possibility that real innovation--a whole new way of thinking about how to deliver higher education--could save public higher education. Keep the core mission: educating the children of the state at a reasonable p...

Central to debates over the New Badger Partnership is the question of whether additional flexibilities that make it possible to raise tuition are desirable. Evidence can and must be used to make these decisions. A robust, evidence-based debate on our campus is obviously needed but to date has not occurred. Instead, to many of us outside Bascom it seems as though administrators have mostly relied on the input of a few economists and some other folks who work in higher education but are not scholars of higher education. It also seems like seeking advice from those mostly likely to agree with you. (Please--correct me if I'm wrong--very happy to be corrected with evidence on this point.) It would be wonderful to see a more thorough review of existing evidence and the development of an evaluation plan that will assess positive and negative impacts of any new policy in ways that allow for the identification of policy effects-- not correlations. (Let's be clear: comparing enrollme...

There is much buzz here at UW-Madison about the proposed New Badger Partnership. You can read all the details about what the Chancellor has proposed here , and you can read about some of the concerns expressed here . In the interest of a rich discussion of this important policy proposal, I want to draw your attention to some relevant research on the topic. I'll start off with a recent paper by Michael McLendon, professor at Vanderbilt University, and his colleagues Russ Deaton and Jim Hearn. In a 2007 article McLendon discusses trends in higher education governance reforms over the last several decades, and in particular the rationales posed for these reforms. The piece is worth reading in its entirety, but here are some highlights relevant to the campus debate: Between 1985-2002 states considered more than 100 different ways to modify governance of higher education systems. "Policy rationales asserted in justification of these changes often pointed to the desire for impro...

Sometimes a story just writes itself: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker duped (on tape) by a liberal blogger posing as major right-wing Republican donor David Koch . Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel coverage Huffington Post coverage Ezra Klein (Washington Post) One Wisconsin Now

You don't get to be a professor at a top university by settling or compromising. You get there by striving, competing, and working against all odds to cram extra hours into already-long days. You expect the best, of everyone. So it's hard to be a professor at a public university right now. Almost by definition, public universities aren't the top of the heap in spending on the things that professors are trained to care most about-- research, salaries, resources. This leads to frustration, anger, and indignation when our talents go unrecognized, our fields disrespected, and our friends leave for private universities. It's hard to be a professor at a public university, for sure. Of course, it's also hard to be a kid whose entire future depends on achieving economic stability and that seems to depend on college-- but college is increasingly out of reach. You're told that the flagship college in your state is really the only one that's worth going to and despi...

Dear readers, It's quite a time here in Wisconsin. I've spent the academic year juggling a major research project, teaching, and being a wife and mom of two young kids. This blog is something I've had to set aside in an effort to get all of that done. And I know I should stick with that focus, especially seeing as how this is the semester I'm up for tenure. But there is just so much going on around me, it's getting near impossible not to comment. That said, as I do comment, I cannot help but feel that Madison--and Wisconsin--is not the same place it was when I started blogging in early 2009. It no longer feels like a safe bastion of liberalism where freedom of speech is secure and all voices respected. It feels, frankly, a bit like Virginia where I grew up-- or maybe (god forbid) even Florida. So, you can bet I'm going to be a more cautious optimist as I write. In fact, I think for now I will let others speak for me. On the topic of whether the University ...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is out for more than money . He's out for blood. He won't quit until he drives a stake through the hearts of public employee unions in the Badger State. That much is clear . How this current saga will end is anyone's guess. The amazing protests that have taken over the Wisconsin State Capitol and downtown Madison might wear down, if not Walker, the few moderate Republican state senators remaining. Or the GOP might try to eliminate collective bargaining without needing the "Wisconsin 14" -- the Senate Democrats who have crossed the Illinois border to prevent a vote on the budget bill -- by pulling the collective bargaining provisions out as separate legislation (which would require only 17 senators present; there are 19 Republicans). The outcome? A general strike perhaps. Wisconsin unions and Democratic lawmakers have already publicly agreed to accept sizable concessions on health benefits and pensions as demanded by Walker and...

Forward . That's the Wisconsin state motto . Our new governor is calling it into serious question. Since arriving in the governor's office in January, Scott Walker has directed his state driver to put the peddle of his gleaming new SUV to the metal ... in reverse. In my thirty nine years, I have never lived under such a retrograde governor. The likes of Mike Dukakis, Bill Weld, Madeleine Kunin, Dick Snelling, Howard Dean, Jim Doyle each stand in sharp contrast to the arrogance, spitefulness and wrong-headedness of Walker. I am ashamed that this man is the leader of our state. Nice going, Badgers. Walker's proposal to close Wisconsin's current fiscal year budget deficit includes a de facto salary cut of more than 8 percent (in the form of greater contributions into the state pension system and for health benefits) for all state and university employees. The impact on the state economy -- and on the Madison area, in particular -- from the enactment of such a proposal ...

Derek Stolp I am nearly finished reading a truly remarkable book about mathematics education in the US, what we can do about it to make it more effective and meaningful, and a call for a return to democratic core values in our entire approach to schooling (okay, I'm not sure the author goes quite that far explicitly, but let me do so for him if he doesn't). The author is Derek Stolp, pictured above, and the book is MATHEMATICS MISEDUCATION: The Case Against A Tired Tradition.   It's a definite must-read if you are concerned about just how off-base both traditional and many reform efforts are in US mathematics education. For example, Stolp makes a very telling point about NCTM's commitment to real-world mathematics in his examination of the article content in THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER from 2002, the year he was writing his book. Unsurprisingly, to me at least, he found a rather dramatic mismatch between NCTM's public commitment in, say, PSSM  to real-world connections ...

The challenges surrounding the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) plan to replace principals at underperforming schools across the nation ( New York Times : "U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In?" ) reminds me of the unintended consequences of California's class size reduction policies during the 1990s. As the New York Times reported yesterday about the ED's $4 billion plan to radically transform the country’s worst schools by installing new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools, "[T]here simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over." California experienced a similar human capital problem when it reduced class sizes statewide in grades k-3. An unintended consequence of its state policy was the hiring of more emergency-credentialed and unqualified educators as a result of the additional teaching positions needed to enable smaller class sizes. As this Center for the Future of Teaching and Lear...

Just as I said . Republicans now controlling the House promised Thursday to slash domestic agencies' budgets by almost 20 percent for the coming year , the first salvo in what's sure to be a bruising battle over their drive to cut spending to where it was before President Barack Obama took office. "Washington's spending spree is over," declared Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who announced the plan. The White House says the GOP effort could cause widespread furloughs of federal employees, force vulnerable people off subsidized housing, reduce services in national parks and mean less aid to schools and police and fire departments. Popular programs such as health research and federal aid to school districts appear likely to take a hit when lawmakers write the spending bill for the departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services. Tax cuts for the rich prioritized over all else. I note that former Labor Secretary and current Ber...