Campus Connection

Panel discusses difficult budget year ahead for UW System

A panel discussion and open forum on campus Tuesday brought policy makers together with higher education leaders to discuss the challenging budget year ahead for the UW System. With competing priorities in the state budget such as transportation, Medicaid and K-12 education, the UW System can expect another difficult budget year, predicted State Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse, a member of the panel. She added that despite the competing budget priorities, she didn’t want to see cuts to higher education or K-12 education. She and others on the panel said continued cuts with no tuition increases will decrease the quality of education the UW System can offer. The continued decline in support draws questions about where the System is going in terms of not only quality, but also research, recruiting, tuition and a number of other issues, said Joe Heim, UWL professor emeritus and university legislative liaison who moderated the panel. He described this as “a time of crisis in higher education in Wisconsin.” “An old joke is that we’ve gone from a state supported, to a state assisted, to a state located system,” said Heim. “People used to laugh at that, but it’s increasingly true today.” After a $250 million cut to the UW System last year, the system is asking for $92.5 million in the next budget cycle, which President Ray Cross called a “reasonable and thoughtful” request. During the forum, panelists took questions on the impact of having a university in the community, the outlook for the next budget, challenges related to the perception of higher education, who will be an advocate for public education and more. [caption id="attachment_47499" align="aligncenter" width="685"] The panel included, from left, Rep. Jill Billings; UW System President Ray Cross; Patrick Bever, vice president of the UWL Student Association; Anne Galbraith, UWL Faculty Senate chair; Rusty Cunningham, editor of the La Crosse Tribune; Brent Smith, former member of the UW System Board of Regents. The panel was moderated by Joe Heim, UWL professor emeritus and university legislative liaison.[/caption] On the importance of the university in the community, Billings pointed to the return on investment of the UW System: Every dollar of taxpayer support provides at least a $10 return to the Wisconsin economy. “That’s a good deal for our taxpayer dollars,” she said. But Billings also talked about the social and cultural benefit. For her personally, that means attending functions that wouldn’t happen without the university such as regional economic updates, theatre performances and listening to “mind expanding” public lectures. “Last time I was in the overflow room sitting on the floor — it was packed,” said Billings referring to the last Nobel Prize Winning Lecture in Physics at UWL. “Who else gets to do that in Wisconsin?” Cross discussed some of the factors working against the university such as the perception that it is not as efficient as it could be. But some suggested changes he hears, like offering only online courses, get away from the heart of what happens at a university — namely dialogue and interactions between people that are transforming. Higher education needs to be thought of as an investment in the future of Wisconsin, which is dependent on an educated populace, said Cross.