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UW President Jay Rothman was the key witness at the second meeting of the state Legislature’s Study Committee on the Future of the UW System. (Screenshot via WisEye)

Rothman: UW system faces enrollment, financial support and public perception challenges

by Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner
August 9, 2024

University of Wisconsin system President Jay Rothman told lawmakers on Thursday that the system faces significant challenges in three areas: shrinking enrollment, inadequate financial support that threatens affordability for students, and public wariness about the value and cost of higher education.

Rothman was the key witness at the second meeting of the state Legislature’s Study Committee on the Future of the UW System. The committee, made up of four state lawmakers and 14 members of the public with varied ties to the university system, asked Rothman what the system is doing to meet challenges it confronts and what additional funding from the state could do to help address them. The study committee is tasked with coming up with legislative recommendations by the end of 2024.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, about 17% of the UW system’s current funding,  or $1.3 billion, comes from state general purpose revenue. Committee co-chair Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said that the funding means that “meddling” is a responsibility she has to taxpayers.

“We want to support the system, but at the same time, there’s an accountability factor, and what we’re hearing from people in Wisconsin, is there’s a lack of trust,” Nedweski said. 

Rothman acknowledged that the UW system exists to serve the state and agreed that the system needs to continue to work towards building trust. He pointed out, however, that the current level  of state funding for its university system puts Wisconsin at 43rd of 50 states for  state support. 

“A lack of adequate resources will eventually undermine our well-deserved reputation for academic excellence,” Rothman said. “I’ve spent my entire life in this state. That’s not the Wisconsin I grew up in. It is not the recipe for long-term success in my humble opinion.”

In 1985, state general purpose revenue represented 41.8% of the UW system’s budget, according to the fiscal bureau.

At a June meeting of the UW Board of Regents, Gov. Tony Evers said that he will ask the state Legislature to increase the system’s funding by more than $400 million in each year of the 2025-27 biennial budget as a way of getting it “back on track.” The additional funding, Rothman said, could put the state back towards the national median for state spending on public universities. 

Nedweski appeared skeptical about providing additional funding when there has been a history of declining enrollment, asking several questions about why more people aren’t enrolling in the UW system. 

“I’m not sure how I can come back to my constituents and the taxpayer and say ‘the Universities of Wisconsin need to continue to operate at the same spending level when they have less people to serve currently,’” Nedweski said. “People are saying, What do they want money for if they have less people? What do they need money for?’”

Rothman noted that UW enrollment increased in 2023 by more than 1,700 students, the first increase since 2014. He also explained some of the steps that the UW is taking to entice more people to enroll at UW system institutions, such as the new automatic admission program. Ten UW institutions are participating this year in the program, which directly admits Wisconsin high school students to UW schools without filing applications.

Rothman, however, also said  that inflation has affected how much the UW system can do with the dollars it receives. 

“Inflation has gone through the roof. Our purchasing power of those dollars is less, and therefore, the state support is significant,” Rothman said. 

Rothman emphasized that state funding will affect the future of the system — at one point commenting that “you get what you pay for.”

“The state taxpayer has invested millions of dollars over multiple generations,” Rothman said. “The question I think we are now facing is, are we going to allow that to wither?”

Additional state dollars would likely go towards a broad set of priorities, Rothman said. One would be the Wisconsin Tuition Promise, which provides free tuition to students from families with incomes less than $55,000. That represents a drop from when the program launched in 2023 and covered families making under $62,000.

The program aims to help students from disadvantaged households afford school. Requests to the Legislature in the recent budget cycle for additional funding for the program went unmet. 

“It is not going to serve as many students, and I have to contrast that with Minnesota… They have made a commitment to educate, quite frankly, more of their students,” Rothman said. “I know people talk about a tuition promise [is] somehow you’re giving a break to somebody or it’s free tuition, which I don’t think it is because these students are working. They still have to pay for housing, they still have to pay for books. They still have the opportunity cost… These students are dedicated.

Other potential investments would include increasing academic advising and career readiness programs, providing more mental health services to students, providing better compensation to staff and investing in innovation and artificial intelligence, Rothman said.

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