UW Tuition Soars - Wells Defends UWO Budget Cuts

Continuing the Doyle Administration era trend of making public higher education more expensive and less accessible for children of middle class and poor families, the Board of Regents yesterday raised tuition another 6.8%. UW System tuition has now been raised more than 50%(!) in the last four years.

Meanwhile, Regent Jesus Salas expressed concerns over the manner in which System schools are managing state imposed budget cuts, especially at UW Madison and UW Oshkosh (scroll down):

Regent Jesus Salas of Milwaukee questioned the level to which institutions were able to meet the Board’s intent to protect student instruction as they reduced budgets. He noted that many of the cuts came from budgets for instruction, institutional support, student services and academic support. He particularly noted cuts in UW-Madison’s English-as-a-Second-Language Program, and the reduction of an affirmative action officer position at UW-Oshkosh.

UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells explained that the campus’s long-time affirmative-action officer has taken another position in human resources on campus, but with help from another staffer, continues to fulfill the duties of the position in order to manage budget cuts. Wells said he intends to refill the full-time position in 2007-08.

“You’re looking at real life on campus,” Wells said of the cuts, noting that tough decisions had to be made, but that the campus continued to serve the same number of students, and even added positions in advising and career services. “We stayed committed to the access mission.”

With all due respect to Regent Salas, who is actually the most conscientious member of the Board, the reduction of the affirmative action officer has been one of the more painless cost saving measures on our campus. Last year's letter from the Faculty Senate to Governor Doyle described the real impacts the cuts have had on our educational mission:

The increasing numbers of students taught by each of our decreasing number of faculty has caused a shift to more part-time instructors, fewer essay examinations, fewer writing assignments, and less individual teacher-student interaction. We have been forced to decrease the student support services that are most important for less well-prepared students, and to delay or ignore preventative maintenance of our physical facilities and replacement of obsolete laboratory and computer equipment. Further, some major and minor programs have been eliminated, and forced internal reallocations have decreased the quality of those programs that remain.