Governor Scott Walker’s administration announced its plan for balancing Wisconsin’s state budget right before the holidays, on Dec. 23,2011. The additional cuts of $123.1 million in 2011-12 will affect a multitude of state programs, but the biggest cuts by far will be taken from the UW System – $46.1 million.

The Walker administration has exempted some priorities from this latest round of cuts, including aid to local schools, health programs for the poor, technical colleges, child welfare programs, local prosecutors and financial aid for college students. However, even with these exemptions, over a third of the total cuts will be from the UW System. These cuts will add to the $250 million already made to the UW System in the two-year budget.

In a Dec. 14 letter to Walker’s budget director, UW System President Kevin Reilly said UW System cuts were the largest in history and would affect the state’s economy and its families. He said that universities would have fewer and larger classes, current students would need more time and larger loans to graduate and future students would find it more difficult to get into UW System schools.

“To put this in another perspective, $46 million is equivalent to a full year’s worth of state support for 11,360 UW students or 511 faculty and staff positions,” Reilly wrote.

In addition, Reilly has called UW’s cuts “highly disproportionate,” noting that the system gets seven percent of state funding but is taking 38 percent of the cuts.

All together, $174 million will be cut from the UW System’s general-purpose revenue (state dollars) from 2011-13. Nearly $9 million of that will be cut from UW-Milwaukee, UWM’s Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administrative Affairs Christy Brown said.

“[Budget cuts are] frustrating when you know what you can do and you see what the lack of funds is keeping you from doing. We’re part of the solution for the state and it’s frustrating what’s been going on that makes us feel like, we’re put below the prisons, really,” University Committee Chair Mark Schwartz said.

Schwartz and other UWM professors are trying to address these issues through the University Committee, the Faculty Senate’s Executive Committee. In a Jan. 24 letter to the Special Task Force on UW Restructuring and Operational Flexibilities, the UC outlined UWM’s unique mission in Wisconsin.

UWM is a doctoral granting institution, “with scholars that are known nationally and internationally and who are heavily engaged in research and teaching,” according to the UC. It is also an “access” institution, meaning it provides a high quality education at an affordable price to more Wisconsin residents than any other institution in the UW System.

The UC cites studies from the MIT Industrial Performance Center, which outline ways in which urban research institutions support the local economy, such as “attracting new human knowledge and financial resources to a region,” and “integrating previously separated areas of technological activity.”

The letter also raises an alarm about the rate of resignations from UWM – two to three times the normal rate. Three examples are provided by the UC how this specifically affects UWM:

A professor in the Peck School of the Arts left for a 35 percent increase in salary.

A world-renowned professor left the School of Freshwater Sciences (along with his whole research team—about five people) for a new laboratory in another state because UWM lacked funds for infrastructure upgrades needed to support cutting-edge research on the health of yellow perch and lake trout populations.

An associate professor of education, who specializes in the educational needs of struggling urban K-12 students, left for a 44 percent increase in salary plus research support worth at least $50,000.

The establishment of a separate UWM governing board is called for by the UC, given “UWM’s unique contribution to education and economic growth.”

This new board would work with the existing UWS Board of Regents, but would give UWM some new flexibility, such as the ability to set compensation based on market rates and to set a tuition that is reflective of the cost of providing that education.