oflovefaithhopedream

At a meeting of the Regents today, Representative Robin Vos suggested that the Wisconsin Legislature Republican caucus is rethinking the faculty's role in governance on UW System campuses, out of a sense that they are keeping the System from being "nimble."  I am concerned that Representative Vos may be unaware of economic research that indicates that faculty involvement in decision-making through shared governance appears to contribute to the containment of college costs.  Reducing faculty power in favor of increasing the administration's relative power could make college less affordable for Wisconsin students.  These unintended consequences of Vos's short-sighted idea deserve close examination, and I urge him to attend to these before pursuing it further. Here is the document from the Republican working group . Here is the video from the conference.  Vos begins speaking at the 1:17 minute mark on the first video, and these comments come just after the 1:18 min...

Today's Journal Sentinel has an excellent chart illustrating how the challenge of paying for college in Wisconsin has changed over time The only problem is that neither the chart or the accompanying article addresses the likely assumption of many readers : students who can't pay these costs, even by working, are "held harmless" through financial aid.  For that reason, many say, we should simply raise tuition further and invest that additional revenue in financial aid distributed to the neediest students. To evaluate that claim, let's take a look at the "net price" of attending UW-Madison and UW-comprehensives-- the cost paid by the poorest students after taking into account all grant/scholarship aid provided to offset the sticket price.   At UW-Madison, for the upcoming year 2013-2014, that amount is $13,635.00 for Pell recipients with no expected family contribution.   As you can see in the chart above, that means students from families typically earn...

Once in awhile people ask me how I can continue to call myself an education optimist when the "new normal" is so grim.  They ask, "why do you continue tilting at windmills instead of being pragmatic and accepting the situation?" The answer is simple: acceptance is unnecessary and defeat is not an option.  I challenge the status quo for the sake of students. Today, I want to say Take that, windmill! The University of Wisconsin System just ceded to the demands of students across the State and agreed to cap a tuition increase at no more than 2% for the coming year and eliminate the waiting list for the Wisconsin Higher Education Grant.  This is a stunning reversal, as President Kevin Reilly had been lobbying against students, insisting that no cap was necessary. What happened?  Well, as I have long insisted, the issue is not entirely about a lack of state funding being provided to higher education but how administrators are spending   it.   When the ...

I had the privilege of serving alongside a representative from U.S. PIRG during Senate testimony yesterday, and so today, in support of the hard work they are doing on behalf of students everywhere, I want to weigh in on the situation here in Wisconsin. UW-Madison Interim Chancellor David Ward recently released his decision on the Associated Students of Madison (ASM)'s approved segregated university fee budget following months of student decision-making. One focus of his decision was removing a majority of the budget for WISPIRG, a statewide, student-directed and funded public interest group and registered student organization, despite student approval.   The issue of WISPIRG’s funding has received much attention lately, from students, the Associated Students of Madison, the Chancellor, and the media. And now in light of Chancellor Ward’s decision, ASM is preparing an appeal to the Regents.  WISPIRG was founded by Madison students in 1989 in order to tackle public inte...

This is an important week for UW System and not only because of the UW-Madison chancellor search but also because the search for a new chancellor of Eau-Claire has also been wrapped up. The media indicates an announcement naming that new leader will come Monday . With sincerest apologies to our sister school, I've been focusing on Madison while apparently fires are burning over at Eau-Claire.  Contrary to the media account just referenced,  5 candidates were not  under consideration this week-- instead, there were just 2.   All three female candidates for chancellor of UW-Eau Claire pulled out of the search.   Where there's smoke like that, there's usual fire.  Why in the world did these three women withdraw their applications? 1. Pam Benoit, executive vice president and provost at Ohio University 2. Kathryn Cruz-Uribe, provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University, Monterey Bay 3. Anne E. Huot, provost and vice president fo...

There's hardly ever been a more difficult and auspicious time to lead a public flagship university. Yet at the same time, I believe it's among the greatest opportunities, and anyone would be beyond lucky to have the job. The last chancellor of UW-Madison nearly undid our relationship with our state. In my opinion, then and now, she was nothing short of disastrous.  And, we have learned since her departure that her employment could have been avoided if only the search had involved a genuine due diligence process before she was brought in for interviews. For example, had due diligence occurred, we would have known-- before she came to woo the campus with her charisma-- that as long as Biddy's around, no one needs to have good ideas, for she has them all. In a setting like ours, where shared governance prevails, and we know that good ideas come from all sorts of places, she clearly wouldn't have fit. Due diligence is a must when hiring any leader. And it's incredibly ...

Providing more students with a variety of college choices is a good thing.  But I'm beginning to wonder about the unintended consequences of policies that try to accomplish it. Take the case of Wisconsin, which shares a tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota.  Many students, especially those living on the borders of the two states, and those who don't get a place in their flagship university, choose to attend college in the other state. That's very nice, of course, and very neighborly. And, according to the press , it helps the state attract "the best students."  But every policy has its downsides, and in this case there may be several: (1) It seems to nudge data reporting toward the uninformative . Since both Minnesota and Wisconsin are treated as residents for tuition purposes, the vast majority of official reporting from the state and the campuses combines the two groups.  This makes it hard for the public to examine the characteristics of Wisconsin res...

Don't you just love last-minute breaking news when you're trying to head out the door on vacation? Come on.....!  THIS JUST IN. Tim Sullivan, businessman, has issued a blueprint prepared for Governor Scott Walker that includes some significant plans for higher education. Among its highlights: The skills gap demonstrated by highly-esteemed economists , as well as leading Wisconsin organizations with sizable expertise in business and higher education is apparently a "myth. "  Writes Sullivan, "there are opportunities available if people know where to look and can see the value." (p.101) Sure, he admits his is no scientific study-- after all, he is doing policy analysis by anecdote, drawing on his experiences at his own company-- but gee, he's sure confident there's a myth out there to be busted! The costs of Wisconsin Technical Colleges are too high because they are doing too much--namely, wasting time on liberal arts college transfer, "spending...

Check out this morning's story from Inside Higher Ed for more information and questions. I'm told we can expect details from UW System soon, and I know many of us eagerly await them.

Today Governor Scott Walker (whom my son happily continues to call "RecallWalker") and the UW System announced a joint effort to provide competency-based online degree programs. The program will be initiated and led by UW Extension faculty and staff under Chancellor Ray Cross. My feelings about Walker are well-known.  I have a hard time believing he has the best interests of UW System at heart.  That said, I don't think this was Walker's idea, and I don't think his interest in it means it's necessarily a bad idea. Here are a few reasons why: 1) Competency-based online instruction has been implemented all over the world. It aims to break the link between seat-time and credit in order to get students accessible, affordable degrees. Those are good objectives. Credit for sitting in a seat for a certain amount of time has never felt smart. (2) The typical conservative approach to implementation is a clear effort to undermine full-time faculty --bring in an outside ...

I spent this week on a Badger bus, traveling about 600 miles around Wisconsin with 39 colleagues from UW-Madison.  The Wisconsin Idea Seminar took our group to more than a dozen communities, from farms and factories that make wind, milk, sauerkraut and ships, to several schools and colleges, a prison, and even Lambeau Field.  It was an experience unlike any I’ve ever had, as I came to understand why the social compact between the University of Wisconsin and the state is so critical to our mutual survival. We are in the midst of an historic impasse, a time when the standoffs between Left and Right make it hard to imagine a future for UW System that isn't austere or privatized.  But what I learned on this trip is that we are failing to solve this problem because, as Kathy Cramer Walsh keeps telling us , we are not listening .  So please, humor me. Let me tell you what I learned from these four vibrant women  of the  Menominee Nation . Lisa Waukau Paula ...

Last year, I wrote extensively about efforts led by former Chancellor Biddy Martin and her administration, donors, and alumni to privatize (or at least semi-privatize) the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  That effort was partially successful, for while Martin and colleagues failed to separate Madison from the rest of the UW System, or gain authority over tuition setting, they did succeed in getting Madison the authority to redesign its human resources system.  This new "flexibility" was praised by many on campus, including staff, faculty, and students, who recognize that the current bureaucracy is not working, especially for those outside of administration. So, this year the Human Resource Design Project has been advertised as a tremendous opportunity, hard won, and far better than the alternative -- the status quo.  Perhaps.  But few reforms are without consequence, and the r ecommendations recently offered by the working teams in HR Design suggest this case is n...

This week is also another meeting of the UW System Board of Regents. Consistent with yesterday's blog, here I am sharing some thoughts from one of my students who watched the February 9 meeting of that Board.  This was the meeting at which members discussed rising costs, cost containment, and the potential for cutting enrollment throughout UW System. " The debate following the panel of chancellors reflected the three corners of the Iron Triangle: access, funding, and quality. Surprisingly, most of the concerns seemed to revolve around issues of quality, and to some extent access, not around funding concerns...When pressed on the issue, [President Kevin] Reilly was forced to admit that he did not know when or if quality decline would result in reduced enrollment... Chancellors Sorenson and Wachter noted students' reluctance to leave universities for the workforce. While not using the same intense and accusatory rhetoric of a Jackson Toby , they did claim that students lack...

Today the Wisconsin Legislature's "Special Task Force on UW Restructuring and Operational Flexibilities" meets again in Madison.  In honor of that, I want to bring you some student perspectives on one of the prior task force meetings-- the one that took place on February 8, and included presentations from the chancellors of UW-Madison and Milwaukee . I'm doing this because student voices are notably absent from these meetings-- students have not been given a chance to present (they will, for the first time, on May 9) and they do not serve on the task force.  A few have written letters or spoken publicly on the topic, but most have not. Recently, students in my Introduction to Debates in Higher Education Policy course (EPS 518) were asked to view a legislative or regents hearing or meeting of their choosing and write a response paper.  Below, I provide some representative examples of their responses -- these are deliberately provided without attribution to the student ...

Lest you thought their interests in UW System were merely economic, Wisconsin legislators have now baldly demonstrated their political agendas with regard to institutions of public higher education.   Squelching an art exhibit hosted by UW Extension, legislator Steve Nass framed his attack on academic freedom as an appropriate intrusion, intended to "help" Extension's long-term interests in having state funding by promoting political correctness. Linking together the new austerity in higher education with political interests in suppressing "liberal" education and the activities of the arts and humanities, the Wisconsin legislature brings the past antics of Lynne Cheney and her ilk to a whole new level.  It is imperative that UW System not operate out of economic fear, compromising the integrity of its programming, and instead reverse the decision to cancel "Art in Protest"-- holding the event proudly, to fulfill the mission of its name.

It is often said that access/diversity and affordability in higher education can only come at the expense of quality. Thus, it is all-too-common for critics  to cast those in favor of broadening college access as socialists who simply want to destroy high-quality educational institutions. They promote a false dichotomy that has been kept alive for decades by the consistent retelling of the "tragedy of the commons." The tragedy, we're told, is that people will always strive to maximize their private benefits, and that eventually these will necessarily come at the expense of common goods.  Garrett Hardin famously laid this out for us in 1968. Sadly, far too many people seem to think the tragedy of the commons is a problem that can't be solved. The "iron triangle" model dominating decision-making in higher education confirms this-- since "we know" that spending leads to quality (thus less spending leads to less quality), and that increased access (e.g...

A recent exchange between Chris Rickert and Mike Knetter provides a useful example of what happens when we engage in policy discussions without being insufficiently clear about our intended goals. Chris's column from Thursday was titled " Big donors don't make a big impact on tuition at UW-Madison ." In this piece he makes the following points: (1) UW-Madison faces a public relations problem because it claims to have financial troubles but building construction on campus is rampant. (2) Private donations to UW often go to buildings and athletics, rather than to need-based financial aid. (3) There is a national affordability crisis. He does not tie these three points together in any clear fashion in the text of the column, but the headline attempts to do so by claiming that what the three points tell us is that donors aren't really helping the university respond to the national crisis, since their money doesn't go to discount tuition. Obviously, those who raise...

Another new Education Optimists series-- this one is focused on how to reform our colleges and universities to become more student-friendly. First up, seg fees. Last night as I observed my Twitter feed, I noticed a tweet from a student journalist about a particular aspect of UW System policy on segregated fees. According to System financial rule F50 , in order for an organization to receive seg fees, it must "require that all leadership positions in the organization be held by students enrolled on a fee-paying basis for at least half-time; as used in this policy, "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of six credits as an undergraduate student, and enrollment for a minimum of four credits as a graduate student, except that for UW-Colleges students "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of three credits." This strikes me as a good example of a well-intentioned policy with unintended consequences. The purpose of the policy may be to e...

There has been so much bad news in Wisconsin (and the nation) this week, I haven't had two seconds to catch my breath. Each time I get a moment to think about what is happening here, and how powerless we seem to be in response, something else happens and my temperature rises. Governor Scott Walker seems determined to tear apart the foundation of middle-class life here in Wisconsin, starving the University of Wisconsin System to death. I really don't care whether or not the right to "lapses" (in judgement) was contained in his godawful budget, the fact is that we have already taken a terrible $250 million cut, and now we face another $113.8 million shortfall on top of that . The effects will undoubtedly be detrimental to Wisconsin's middle class, as workers across the state are laid off, and students who can't afford to take 5 years to earn a bachelor's degree will drop out ( declining resources often lead to larger classes and waits for key courses at ...

This week we witnessed Steve Nass's Wisconsin Legislature hearing on the Center for Equal Opportunity's report on UW-Madison admissions, and the Walker administration's announcement that-- SURPRISE!--the state is cutting UW System's funding by an additional $65.7 million. A common theme runs through the discourse and beliefs underlying both events: society's problems originate with and should be borne by individuals. Not policies or practices, politics or economies-- but your average, ordinary Joe and Josephine. According to Roger Clegg of the CEO, the United States provides every child with an equal opportunity to succeed, a high-quality k-12 system, a testing system that is grounded in multicultural competencies and is thus unbiased, and equal access to the resources required to obtain college knowledge, file applications, and secure the necessary financing. Any difficulties in getting admitted, therefore, are the problems of individuals-- and society shouldn...