FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 18, 2011
UW System Statement about 2011-13 Budget Lapse
The UW System learned late on Friday (Oct. 14) that all of our colleges, universities, and extension networks could lose $46 million in state taxpayer support during fiscal year 2011-12, plus an additional $19.6 million next fiscal year.
The 2011-13 State Budget provided for $174.3 million of “lapses” in state GPR funding, requiring state agencies to return funding already allocated in the budget. In a memo released Friday by the DOA Secretary, UW System would absorb $65.6 million of this cut. Although the UW System typically represents about 7% of the state’s GPR expenditures, it is being asked to absorb about 38% of this cut under the plan, subject to approval by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance. It appears that the UW System is being asked to take a much larger share of the lapse compared to state government agencies.
This lapse will add to $250 million in cuts already allocated to the UW System in the biennial budget, coming at a time when UW institutions are well into the academic year. With near record enrollments, campuses have made firm commitments to students, faculty, and staff that cannot be reversed mid-semester.
We do not know how we can take these cuts without negatively affecting the education of our students and the expectations of their families for a quality experience. These disproportionately large cuts will hurt every UW institution’s ability to spur regional economic growth and to help all of Wisconsin emerge from a persistent economic recession.
In the coming days and weeks, UW leaders will appeal for a distribution of lapse amounts that will preserve the UW’s ability to meet the needs of its students and serve as an economic engine for Wisconsin.
# # #
October 2011 Lapse Amounts by UW System Institution
FY 2012 | FY 2013 | 2011-13 Total | |
UW-Madison* | $18,106,065 | $7,702,870 | $25,808,935 |
UW-Milwaukee | $6,207,319 | $2,643,012 | $8,850,331 |
UW-Eau Claire | $2,345,863 | $998,844 | $3,344,707 |
UW-Green Bay | $1,128,776 | $480,621 | $1,609,397 |
UW-La Crosse | $1,899,341 | $808,720 | $2,708,061 |
UW-Oshkosh | $2,257,640 | $961,280 | $3,218,920 |
UW-Parkside | $1,066,609 | $454,151 | $1,520,760 |
UW-Platteville | $1,305,136 | $555,713 | $1,860,849 |
UW-River Falls | $1,306,120 | $556,132 | $1,862,252 |
UW-Stevens Point | $1,929,202 | $821,434 | $2,750,636 |
UW-Stout | $1,773,549 | $755,159 | $2,528,708 |
UW-Superior | $700,290 | $298,176 | $998,466 |
UW-Whitewater | $1,985,927 | $845,587 | $2,831,514 |
UW Colleges | $1,749,461 | $744,902 | $2,494,363 |
UW-Extension | $2,078,362 | $884,945 | $2,963,307 |
UW System Administration | $295,417 | $123,223 | $418,640 |
$46,135,077 | $19,634,769 | $65,769,846 |
* UW-Madison lapse includes State Lab of Hygiene ($691,999) and Vet Diagnostic Lab ($370,337)
To say that I am pissed, and sickened (further, which I so do not need right now) would be the understatement of the year. This is a punishment, plain and simple. Because the system fought Governor Fucktardo's plan to break it up into pieces, we're being gutted. Looking at this, I'm not even sure how we can continue to keep the lights on.
We have already been gutted over $250 million over this last biennium (plus $250m from the previous) and we are cut to the bone. We cannot run any leaner--none of us.
Holy fuck.
ReplyDeleteThese people are scum. They really are. They are evil, filthy scum. They deserve what is going to happen to your state - which is, everyone who has or wants an education beyond or wants to employ someone with an education beyond grade 8 will leave, and wolves will roam in the howling wasteland. And eat the vicious scumbags currently destroying your state. I earnestly hope.
Dumbfucks. Fucking bastards. Losers. Get some do-nothing deans to go get arrested and make a stink in the media.
ReplyDeleteHorrifying. And "system administration" takes a measly $418,000 cut?
ReplyDeleteCue dirge for a once-great state system. I am so sorry. I'm sure that here in CA, we are right behind you. Or maybe ahead of you in ways I don't know yet.
Wow. In my field, the top notch research literature over the last 30-40 years is dominated by state systems - CA, UW, SUNY. As an outsider, you feel like grabbing someone by the shoulders and shaking them real hard while screaming "Do you realize what you are doing?!? Do you realize what an internationally renowned jewel you are throwing away here?!?"
ReplyDeleteSaying that this is punishment misses the strategy of it. They are destroying education in the state to guarantee a permanent tea party / robber baron government.
ReplyDelete@Silverback, while I don't disagree with your assessment, didn't we emerge from previous iterations of feudalistic systems by the expansion of access to education?
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they are succeeding at turning the evolution of culture backward?
Sure, we can call names at the people in charge, but Wisc state officials are looking at cuts to fire, police, schools. Save the University while the town burns down around it? Yes, they are killing their future, but it's an easy choice to cut higher education to save local infrastructure. Yes, it hurts the future economy, but there will be no future jobs if the state's crushing debt causes a default.
ReplyDeleteUWisc appears to have 12 satellite campuses, some of those will have to close. And most state Universities have lowered the number of in-state admissions and increased the number of out-of-state. In other words, if the state will not pay, lower your commitment to the state.
Hm, I had thought that you were part of MATC. Consider me corrected.
ReplyDeleteI do anticipate Madison's once-stellar reputation to plummet in the next 5 years. There is just no way it can function under these terms. Plus, you know, new open carry laws and guns on campus. To, you know, protect us. Or shoot us. Am I the only one watching the doors when I'm teaching? There's no way out if someone comes in with a gun.
(course, we could sell the gun and stay open an extra day. Just kidding. The gun would only keep the lights on for 2o minutes)
Can we stop using Mississippi as a pejorative term, please!? All y'all better stop hating on the South, which seems to be the last culture that it is acceptable to denigrate in academic circles. In a year or two, you might be pleased as pie and damned lucky to have a job in Oxford, Meridian, or Tuscaloosa.
ReplyDeleteYour non-union colleagues at Wisconsin's private colleges and universities feel your pain. We were also singing "We Shall Overcome" in the rotunda last February, and marching around the square when we were locked out of the capitol, and sitting on the lawn in June the day the collective bargaining law went into effect.
ReplyDeleteThe state school I was at for my Masters (in a different Fucktardia) saw the loss of nearly 2/3rds of our state funding. I once went for about a month without being paid (awesome, I tell you).
ReplyDeleteSame state, different school, and the state informed us they wouldn't be paying out $2 billion of the money we needed. It was the first week of the term and we lost departments. Faculty. It was horrifying.
I've since left the state, with most of the grad students I know that have graduated. We didn't look in-state, and we didn't have to be told why not to. Meanwhile, the best faculty that can afford to are jumping ship too. It's all been quieter than Wisconsin, as it has been more gradual, but it's there.
I was on a plane last week next to a woman who went ON AND ON at me about how if I was a professor I should be teaching online and that I was STUPID for still teaching in classrooms. She had on a shirt with several prominent Republican women on it (I kept hoping it was a joke to deter the TSA). Is that what ultimately will happen? That we will all just end up teaching online to faceless students pouring out tons of money for a semi meaningless degree? (Online teaching can work, but it is so regimented at my current institution that I really doubt that it does. We are required to teach in a very specific way that makes us easy to assess, not in a way that has EVER been shown to improve student learning. Ugh.)
They aren't going to stop until the only place to get a degree will be Kaplan, Phoenix and whatever other McSchools the "market supports."
ReplyDeleteAnd somehow, people actually vote for the politics that underlie this bullshit.
Ugh. As the reference to serving students already enrolled suggests, Fucktardia is on its way to having about the same level of credibility as a fly-by-night furniture store that takes substantial deposits but never delivers the goods. I wonder whether students could find a basis to sue?
ReplyDeleteAnd, though I understand the reason for the reference (and have never visited the state myself), I, too, would prefer not to see Mississippi used as a pejorative. We need to get to a point where even the state at the bottom of the spending list has a decent, functional, fully-funded system that prepares students well for work or entry into any state system of higher ed.
@Surly, my apologies. I was looking for a state more benighted than mine, and since I drove through MS this past summer, that's where I landed.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I wouldn't be happy to land at Oxford or any other place in MS. In fact, I would consider it a fate worse than death to drag my family down to the state that ranks 50th in healthcare and at the bottom of a number of other indices, though I suppose with the low cost of living we could live like kings on my current shitty salary. I'd sooner live in Alabama, which at least has a state system that pays better than Fucktardia's. The only thing the state has to recommend it is the Blues Trail. And Drew Fast Food, a bbq shack outside of Drew MS, just past Parchman State Penitentiary.
@MCM: I'm not unionized, either. No faculty are, where I am. It's part of the reason I haven't seen a cost of living raise in more than 5 years.
@Asst Dean: Your argument is fallacious, esp. since my system has already been CUT TO THE BONE in the TWO PREVIOUS BIENNIA--and the state has largely left police and fire alone, for good reason. I agree that cutting police and fire are counter-intuitive, though.