UW: Too Damned Many Bureaucrats

One of the many things I don’t like about Democrats’ attempts (too many successful) to pay off student loans is that those attempts do nothing to address the underlying issue. Which is: why is the cost of college going up so fast?

A big part of that answer comes in a new Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau report. Here are some of its most relevant findings according to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal:

• During the 1992-93 school year, state aid made up 32%, of the UW system’s budget, but in 2023, the state provided just 17.5%. In fact, the UW system now ranks 43rd out of 50 states for state funding per full-time student,

• Much of the difference was made up by tuition. In 1992, 14.4 % of the UW system’s budget came from tuition. In 2023, tuition made up 23.6% of the UW system’s budget.

• But in addition to greater reliance on tuition, there has also been a burgeoning of the UW bureaucracy. The system has about 6,000 more staff for a student population that is almost exactly what it was — about 160,000 — 30 years ago. The number of academic staff excluding Madison, which dominates the category with 13,133 academic staff supporting teaching and research, has increased by 4,273 employees in the last 30 years.

• And here’s the real kicker. Teaching staff is actually down. Madison has lost 75 tenured faculty positions since 1992, despite growing by thousands of students and adding nearly 8,000 academic staff. But that’s actually not so bad compared to most UW system schools. They have between 25% and 30% fewer faculty positions than they did 30 years ago.

So you want to find a culprit for fast-growing tuition? Look to three things: declining taxpayer support, bloated staff and building binges. The last issue was not addressed in the Fiscal Bureau report, but it’s a real problem.

These problems are related. You can’t expect the Legislature to give the UW more money as long as it wastes it on bureaucrats. “If the UW system wants the Legislature and taxpayers to take their massive $855 million budget increase seriously, they’ll need to provide much more than flowery talking points,” said Rep. David Steffen, a Green Bay area Republican.

That $855 million budget increase is a fantasy and it’s just ludicrous for the UW and Gov. Tony Evers to even propose it with Republicans in control of budget writing.

Now, of course, it’s not just bloated bureaucracy that gets under the Republicans’ skin. There is an unquestioned liberal, even hard-left, bias in higher education which is especially pronounced at the UW. And bureaucracy and bias come together in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. The Legislative Audit Bureau is taking a deep dive into DEI staffing and programs and that report should be ready in the next few months.

But here’s the thing. Democrats fought even that audit of DEI programs by the widely respected and nonpartisan Audit Bureau. They don’t even want the information, which is an example of how DEI has become a sort of religion on the hard-left.

If Democrats should eke out a majority in the Assembly in November and take control of half of the Joint Finance Committee, they’d be smart not to just blindly shovel more money at the UW. Instead, they should demand some accountability from the UW about the size of its bureaucracy. Any more money for the UW should come with strings – no, rope, better yet chains — attached.