Friday, April 1, 2016

Walker and the ruling party's plan for UWM: starvation

[Updated 2:02 p.m.] These recent Journal Sentinel stories about the ruling party's intentional sand-bagging of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - -

UWM chief lays out budget cuts but key details to come

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would cut as much as $41.25 million from its budget over the next three years under a plan Chancellor Mark Mone introduced Monday to address a $38 million deficit... 
The university has lost a total $22.1 million in tuition revenue since 2010. 
In addition, state lawmakers have cut funding — $30 million in the 2015-'17 budget — or failed to keep its commitments, including committing $10 million to establish the School of Freshwater Sciences and Zilber School of Public Health but then pulling back $20 million promised to staff and equip the schools.
As Columbia Hospital site languishes, UWM longs for next step 
The east side university bought the Columbia St. Mary's Hospital complex next door for $20 million when the hospital closed in 2010. UWM officials made plans to re-purpose the six hospital buildings — spanning 4 1/2 city blocks — into a new academic neighborhood for health sciences, education and honors programs...
But today, much of the complex known as the Northwest Quad still sits empty... 
Last year, Gov. Scott Walker recommended against funding a $60.2 million scaled-down version of an earlier request for the first phase of remodeling the old hospital. The state Building Commission followed his lead and issued no bonding for capital projects anywhere in the UW System.
- - underscore Scott Walker and out-state legislators' disdain for The Wisconsin Idea, and for the state's biggest city and its deep blue East side, and for the connections between growth and education despite Walker's talking point billboards here and there about the state being "open for business." 

And what faculty could be recruited to UWM if the state cuts funding or pulls it back from  programs and entire new schools?

Note also that UWM has considerably more low-income and minority students than other UW system campuses - - and has far less access to big dollar supporting assets than enjoyed at UW-Madison, according to this piece from Urban Milwaukee.

Grist for litigation over funding discrimination?



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gee, it is as if Scott Walker deliberately wants to keep everyone as stupid as he is himself.

Man MKE said...

This is not only another misguided but feel-good "defund the left" ploy, it's another effort to disempower both academicians, organized labor, and minorities. And Walker couldn't do it by himself; he needed the ready support of rural GOP lawmakers who hate Milwaukee and Madison (c.f. Prof. Katherine Cramer and her study of rural v. urban views in Wisconsin). Another way of describing it: Eating your seed corn.