Straws in the Wind - Part 311

From Inside Higher Ed: Republicans are fuming over the decision to oust the system president. One Democrat countered that “we need to stop partisan finger-pointing.” Republicans in Wisconsin want answers and are vowing to retaliate after the Universities of Wisconsin system Board of Regents fired President Jay Rothman [last] Tuesday night with no public explanation.

Accusing the regents of blatant partisanship, Republicans in the State Legislature are planning to hold a hearing on the firing and to vote against 10 board appointees who have been nominated and are already serving on the board but haven’t been confirmed. The Senate’s GOP-controlled Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, which is holding the hearing, can’t stop the nominations on its own, but the mounting threats may set up a showdown over who serves on the board if the full Republican-majority Legislature takes up the fight.

Rothman, who has led the 25-campus system for almost four years, has said he doesn’t know why he was fired and defended his tenure. In a series of letters made public last week, he accused the board of trying to push him out without explanation...

“I think that the notion that he is unaware of the problems and challenges and people’s concerns is bullshit. He absolutely is aware. He absolutely has been informed by the regents in many different conversations,” [a] source said. “And it’s not just the regents who are the ones who have concerns. They are responsible for managing over a dozen campuses, and many of the chancellors on those campuses also had concerns and complaints about his leadership, and he is very much aware of that.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2026/04/08/rothman-firing-divides-wisconsin-lawmakers.

Straws in the Wind - Part 251

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Last summer, Bonnie Shucha, a librarian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, sat in her office listening to an AI voice attempt to distill her 41-page research article on scholarship visibility into a five-minute podcast. So far, the new feature on the popular site Academia.edu https://www.academia.edu/ was struggling mightily. “Bonnie suggests things like engaging with broader audiences via social media, or just sharing drafts of papers on platforms like, oh, you know, Academia.edu. A little plug there,” the podcast voice said. “I was like, Well hey, wait a minute, you’re putting words into my mouth,” said Shucha, who serves as an associate dean for library and information services and director of the law library at Wisconsin’s law school. 

Shucha is not the only scholar who says Academia.edu’s new podcast feature is misrepresenting their research. They’ve taken to Academia.edu’s own feedback forums to raise their objections, calling it “offensive,” “borderline impersonation/plagiarism,” and accusing the platform of using “human work … as a free content farm for AI training.” Several academics have left the platform altogether in protest.

...Academia.edu was created in 2008 for academics to upload their work and provide the research community with an open knowledge database, among other things. Today, the site hosts 55 million papers... Academia.edu started using artificial intelligence a few years ago to summarize research and recommend papers visitors might be interested in. 

...The site recently began offering users the ability to generate AI comic strips out of their work. Shucha tried the feature on an article she wrote about the first anti-sex trafficking movement in U.S. history. The resulting four-panel comic includes a joke about a “steamy expose [sic],” misspelled words, and bold type apparently meant to suggest the sounds of an assault taking place. “Gwa lump gya ra grow.”

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/an-ai-bot-is-making-podcasts-with-users-research-these-scholars-arent-impressed.

Straws in the Wind - Part 160

From Inside Higher Ed: Colleges announced more than 850 job cuts last month amid a tumultuous year for the sector. The layoffs hit large, wealthy, research institutions, such as the University of Southern California and Harvard University, which have multi-billion dollar endowments but have been battered by federal research funding losses, as well as small colleges struggling with enrollment declines. Here’s a look at layoffs and program cuts announced in October.

University of Southern California: Grappling with a budget deficit of more than $230 million, USC announced a wave of layoffs last month that will see 259 employees lose their jobs...

Michigan State University: Squeezed by rising operating costs and federal research funding disruptions, the public university eliminated 99 positions as of Oct. 14, President Kevin Guskiewicz announced. Another 83 positions have been “lost due to federal funding cuts” this year, he added...

Carnegie Mellon University: Hit by a loss in federal research funds, the private university in Pennsylvania laid off 75 staff members at its Software Engineering Institute last month... Those cuts reportedly make up 10 percent of the institute’s total workforce...

University of Northern Colorado: Officials at the public university in Greeley announced last month that roughly 50 employees will be laid off due to financial challenges, including declining state funding and slumping enrollment... The university is looking to shed 80 to 100 jobs, between layoffs and eliminating vacancies...

University of Louisiana Lafayette: Facing a $25 million deficit, ULL plans to cut 70 jobs... The reductions will be achieved through a mix “of position eliminations, retirements, resignations and reassignments,” Interim President Jaimie Hebert wrote in an email last month...

Eastern Illinois University: Federal funding losses and decreases in international enrollment prompted layoffs at the public university in Charleston, which is cutting 44 jobs and closing 19 others, local TV station WCIA reported. Eastern Illinois plans to cut 23 instructors on annual contracts and 17 staff jobs, as well as not renew contracts for four academic support roles. Another 19 vacancies at EIU will not be restaffed...

Xavier University of Louisiana: The nation’s only historically Black Catholic university laid off 46 full-time employees last month—roughly 6 percent of its workforce—due to mounting financial pressures... 

Harvard University: Despite a booming endowment, Harvard is once again laying off employees. After an unspecified number of job cuts this summer, Harvard laid off roughly 40 employees in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences last month...

Siena University: More than three dozen administrators and multiple faculty members are set to exit the private Catholic university in New York following a round of recent buyouts, the Times-Union reported. The newspaper noted that enrollment at Siena fell by more than 9 percent this year, and university officials have cast the buyouts as a restructuring effort to “right-size” the institution...

Clarke University: Amid financial pressures, the private Catholic university in Dubuque, Iowa, is cutting 13 academic programs and up to 37 jobs at the end of the academic year... Officials announced the cuts last month in response to declining enrollment and rising costs. A frequently asked questions page on Clarke’s website also noted “a significant budget deficit.” ...

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Ongoing cost-cutting measures at the Wisconsin flagship will see 31 employees laid off and another 156 positions left vacant... Officials announced cost-cutting moves earlier this year but said layoffs would be “a last resort.” ...

University of Idaho: State budget cuts have prompted Idaho’s public universities to trim some positions, including 28 staff and faculty jobs at the public research university... The University of Idaho is making the cuts to shave $3.1 million in personnel costs...

Nebraska Wesleyan University: Cost-cutting efforts at the private university in Lincoln prompted the layoff of 14 staff members and another three positions were reduced from full-time to part-time status, the Lincoln Journal-Star reported. Faculty members were spared from cuts, though some academic programs could be axed in the future following a program review... 

Rhode Island College: Buyouts are on the table at the public college in Providence, which is making voluntary retirement incentives available to as many as 101 employees in an effort to cut costs...

PennWest University: Citing enrollment and financial issues, the public university plans to furlough more than a dozen employees at two of its three campuses starting Nov. 16...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/cost-cutting/2025/11/07/october-brought-deep-cuts-multiple-campuses.

Coming soon to a university near you?

From Inside Higher Ed: Faculty at the cash-strapped Universities of Wisconsin System are pushing back against a proposed copyright policy they believe would cheapen the relationship between students and their professors and potentially allow artificial intelligence bots to replace faculty members. For decades, professors have designed and delivered their courses under a policy that says the 25-campus UW System “does not assert a property interest in materials which result from the author’s pursuit of traditional teaching, research, and scholarly activities.” That includes course materials and syllabi, which faculty members own.

It’s an arrangement faculty say is working, not only for themselves but for their students. But now the university is looking to upend that system, they say. Officials proposed a policy this fall that would give the university system the copyright of any instructional materials, including syllabi.

Under the proposed policy, which was first reported by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this week, copyright ownership of “scholarly works,” which includes lecture notes, course materials, recordings, journal articles and syllabi, would originate with the UW System, “but is then transferred to the author.” However, the system’s general counsel told faculty Nov. 22, “the UWs reserve a non-exclusive license to use syllabi in furtherance of its business needs and mission.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2024/12/06/wisconsin-professors-worry-ai-could-replace.

Diversity Statements Dropped at U of Wisconsin

From Wisconsin Public Radio: The University of Wisconsin will no longer require diversity, equity and inclusion statements from job applicants, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday. The move comes after Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to cut state funding to Wisconsin's public universities. Specifically, Vos has criticized DEI programming at UW as an attempt to "indoctrinate" students with taxpayer dollars.

It's common for universities to ask potential faculty to submit statements describing how they've used their work to further diversity, equity and inclusion. Rothman did not provide an estimate of how many UW positions have previously required such statements, but described the number as "limited."

"We remain absolutely committed to the principles of DEI," Rothman told reporters Thursday. "But when some people believe mandatory diversity statement in employment applications are political litmus tests, then we are not being inclusive."

Sometimes applicants use such statements to discuss what they could offer as member of group that's underrepresented in academia. Critics have charged that such statements are being used to pressure applicants into affirming liberal viewpoints...

Full story at https://www.wpr.org/uw-eliminate-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-statements-job-applicants-vos-threatens-funding-cuts.

No Triggers: The Empire Strikes Back - Part 2

We noted on Friday that there seems to be push-back developing in higher ed, and maybe in the New York Times, regarding speech limitations. The "saga" - as the poster image says - seems to be continuing.* Excerpts from a column by David French in the NY Times: 

...Let’s take Stanford University, for example. In the days and weeks since law students shouted down and disrupted a speech by a federal judge, the center has taken a stand. The dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, penned a powerful, 10-page memorandum that mandated a half-day of instruction on free speech and legal norms, [and] reaffirmed the school’s dedication to the Stanford Statement on Academic Freedom...

Then there’s Cornell University. In March, the school’s undergraduate student assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling for trigger warnings in syllabuses to warn students of “graphic traumatic content” in course content. Cornell’s president, Martha E. Pollack, promptly vetoed it...

The faculty at Harvard University is also stepping up. In an opinion essay in The Boston Globe, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras announced the creation of the Council on Academic Freedom, a coalition of 50 faculty members and several other Harvard employees “devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse.” ...

Vanderbilt University will announce the expansion of the American branch of the Future of Free Speech Project, an initiative run by the Danish think tank Justitia, which will include an international focus on free expression...

And we cannot forget the University of Chicago. Since 2014, it’s arguably been the single most influential academic institution in the United States supporting academic freedom. Its statement on free speech declares the “university’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.” A version of the Chicago statement has been adopted by almost 100 colleges, universities and state university systems, including Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University and the North Carolina and Wisconsin state university systems...

Full column at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/opinion/free-speech-campus-universities-promising-news.html.

At least some of this interest in speech and academic freedom seems to be a reaction of university leadership to political antipathy towards higher ed that has developed in some states and more general skepticism about the value of college degrees.

===

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/04/no-triggers-empire-strikes-back.html.

Sometimes No (US) News Is Good News - Part 14 (More Meds)

We have been posting about - first - the departure of some law schools from cooperation with US News and World Report rankings, and - second - the same non-cooperation recently announced by some med schools. Now there are more med schools joining the non-cooperators. From Inside Higher Ed: More medical and law schools have announced that they are leaving the U.S. News & World Report rankings of those institutions. 

The medical schools of Cornell University and the University of Chicago are the latest to join the movement. Harvard University kicked off the effort this month, and it was quickly joined by the medical schools of Columbia and Stanford Universities and the University of Pennsylvania and the Icahn medical school of Mount Sinai. 

On Thursday, Francis Lee, interim dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, announced that it would join. He said, “Critically, the rankings measure more about the students who enter the school than about the physicians who graduate, or about the actual substance and quality of the medical education we provide along the way. The volatility of the rankings, and the lack of transparency about the formulas and algorithms upon which they are based, also speak to the inadequacy of this annual survey.” 

At the University of Chicago, the leaders of the medical school announced the change in a memo to students and faculty members, The Chicago Tribune reported.They said, “Our overriding concern is to help address and reduce inequities in medical school education.”

Mark Anderson, medical school dean, and Vineet Arora, dean for medical education of the biological sciences division and Pritzker School of Medicine, said, “This decision is based on our judgment that the current methodology raises deep concerns about inequity perpetuated by the misuse of metrics that fail to capture the quality or outcomes of medical education for those who most need these data: applicants to medical school.”

Meanwhile, the law schools at Gonzaga University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison announced that they will not participate in the law school rankings...

Full story at today's https://www.insidehighered.com/live-updates.

So far, no UC med schools have joined the movement.

It pays to have a med school

The federal government accounts for over half of the R&D expenditures in higher ed. And health research accounts for over half of that source. Below is a ranking of higher ed institutions by R&D expenditures:

30 institutions reporting the largest FY 2021 R&D expenditures in all fields: FYs 2019–21 

Click on table to enlarge and clarify.

a Johns Hopkins University includes the Applied Physics Laboratory, with $1,950 million in total R&D expenditures in FY 2021.

b University of Maryland includes expenditures from University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park campuses. In FY 2019, the two campuses began reporting as one research unit to reflect their new strategic partnership. 

Source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23303.

Departing Law Dean

From Madison.com (5-16-22)

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents has selected Jennifer Mnookin as the next chancellor to lead UW-Madison. Mnookin, law school dean at UCLA, was unanimously approved as UW-Madison’s 30th chancellor, the regents announced in a Monday news release. Her appointment will take effect Aug. 4.

Mnookin (pronounced “min-oo-kin”) said in a statement she is “absolutely thrilled to have this opportunity to lead UW-Madison.” She added in a news release issued by UW-Madison that her experience as a lawyer will serve her well in the role of chancellor. “Lawyers have to listen carefully,” Mnookin said. “They have to think strategically. They are, fundamentally, trained as problem solvers and sometimes have to persuade people that don’t necessarily see the world the way they do. They also have to be willing to engage across difference and think seriously about alternative points of view. I do think those are qualities that I will bring to this role as chancellor.”

Source: https://madison.com/news/local/education/university/ucla-dean-jennifer-mnookin-named-uw-madisons-next-chancellor/article_90cafee3-9d44-56c3-b729-5e6e450910b6.html.

Why campuses often really want a med school...

Bank robber Willie Sutton had the answer. If you want a lot of research funding from the federal government and other sources, having a med school is a good way to get it. Below are the latest figures:

Source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22312.

UC Davis is latest institution to adopt a reference check policy

Last year, the University of Wisconsin System very publicly launched a new policy against "passing the harasser" on to unwitting institutions. It said it would disclose substantiated misconduct findings when contacted for employee reference checks. The system also put checks in place to guard against being passed someone else's harassers.

Around the same time, the University of California, Davis, more quietly established its own pilot policy on faculty reference checks. Experts say this kind of policy is still extremely rare in academe -- but that that will soon change.

A year into its pilot, Davis officials are ready to talk about it. Provost Philip Kass, who recently testified about the policy during a Congressional hearing on harassment in the sciences, said Wednesday that he and colleagues sought ways to prevent and otherwise address issues of sexual misconduct on campus. 

And they started thinking about how it's "possible for faculty to move between universities without the incoming university knowing about substantiated findings and discipline for any reason at a prior university."

K-12 school districts already are "well aware" of this problem, Kass said. But colleges and universities are another story -- even though examples abound of professors disciplined for misconduct moving on to new campuses to harass more students or colleagues. Ultimately, Davis adopted a new reference check program to "help prevent us from hiring faculty without the ability to evaluate such historic infractions." ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/27/uc-davis-latest-institution-adopt-reference-check-policy-stem-faculty-misconduct

If anyone says UC is not on top, it's patently untrue

The full listing of the top 100 is at https://academyofinventors.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Top-100-Universities-2018.pdf.

Of course, some patents are worth a lot. Others can be had for a song:

Back to the future for MBA?

Yours truly - for another blog he does - happened to post for this week an item about the pendulum swinging on the MBA vs. specialized degree programs. Now Inside Higher Ed has a piece on that very subject:

Feeling changes in the M.B.A. market, the University of Wisconsin at Madison is considering changes to its M.B.A. program that would “increase accessibility, flexibility” and be “responsive to the changing needs of students and employers.”

That was the message delivered in a vague statement posted by the School of Business Friday, and -- as business schools across the country shake up their M.B.A. programs -- it leaves more questions than answers.

The Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel was unable to shake out any details of what those changes might mean, although a source told The Wall Street Journal that full-time M.B.A. programs might be coming to an end -- a trend that Virginia Tech, the University of Iowa and Wake Forest University, among others, have picked up on already -- in favor of shorter, more specialized programs.

Corroborating the Journal’s source was an email sent to students Wednesday -- cited by Poets & Quants, an outlet that specializes in business schools -- in which Donald Hausch, associate dean for M.B.A. programs, said shutting down the full-time program was seriously being considered. Students were invited to a town hall meeting this week, and a faculty vote on the matter is expected in November.

Wisconsin's announcement noted that the executive and part-time M.B.A. programs would continue to be offered. That news comes as Washington University in St. Louis recently reined in its executive M.B.A. program, moving to close branch offerings in Denver and Kansas City, Mo. The executive M.B.A. program still has international branch offerings, but the move to scale back the domestic program was seen as result of a multitude of factors chipping away at the executive M.B.A. market, and the M.B.A. market as a whole: employers reluctant to pay, the proliferation of online courses and what some are saying is a declining interest in M.B.A. programs from U.S. students...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/23/university-wisconsin-‘considering-future’-mba-program

As it happened, the UCLA B-school had specialized programs in the late 1960s when yours truly joined the faculty. But these were dumped in favor of a generalist MBA when a new dean arrived in the early 1970s - largely because that's how Harvard did it:

Check out http://employmentpolicy.org/page-1775968/5324830#sthash.hPzE2gl9.dpbs

Patents

Source: http://www.academyofinventors.com/pdf/top-100-universities-2016.pdf

Give us a Brake

Brakeman

Ray Cross, president of the University of Wisconsin System, wrote in a March email to the vice president of the system’s Board of Regents, who was chairing a task force on controversial changes to layoff policies concerning tenured faculty members, that tenure should not mean “a job for life,” according to public records first obtained by the The Cap Times. "That is a ‘union’ argument,” Cross wrote to Regent John Behling, comparing faculty members to railroad brakemen whom he said were kept on the job for years after they were no longer needed...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/11/wisconsin-governor-and-university-system-president-anger-professors-comments-tenure

Cross needs to be careful about what train he gets on:

Tenure Issue Continues at U of Wisconsin

From Inside Higher Ed:

The University of Wisconsin System moved a step closer Friday to approving new policies related to tenure -- policies that continue to worry faculty members. With little discussion, the Education Committee of the system’s Board of Regents unanimously voted to recommend draft policies on tenure and processes for layoffs or termination, paving the way for the full board to vote on the policies next month. The new policies were drafted by a system task force after Wisconsin’s Legislature voted last year to strike strong protections for tenured faculty from state statute, but faculty members say the new system-based policies still fall short of meeting American Association of University Professors-recommended standards. John Behling, the board’s vice president and chair of the system’s Tenure Policy Task Force, said the policies were drafted to reaffirm the board’s commitment to strong tenure and academic freedom while also increasing “accountability” to taxpayers. “Without that demonstration of accountability, whether real or perceived, our budget prospects in future years will not improve,” Behling added...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/08/wisconsin-panel-approves-new-draft-tenure-rules

U of Wisconsin Lifts Cap on Out-of-State Undergraduates

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The University of Wisconsin at Madison has lifted its cap on out-of-state undergraduates despite criticism that the proposal was intended primarily to raise revenue... The university system is grappling with a controversial $250-million budget cut in state funds over two years... “Our first commitment is to Wisconsin students,” Ms. Blank told the regents, who approved the measure on Friday. “But we can bring top talented young people into the state from around the nation and the world. We can’t just be doing businesses as usual.”

Full story at http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-wisconsin-lifts-cap-on-out-of-state-undergraduates/105746

The Tenor of the U of Wisconsin Debate on Tenure

Joe McCarthy and Robert La Follette: Mixed Wisconsin Political Legacy

Inside Higher Ed continues its extensive coverage of the tenure issue at the U of Wisconsin about which we have previously blogged.* It appears that what the legislature will do is by now a foregone conclusion. So the debate currently seems to be on whether the powers-that-be at the university did enough to try and stop the legislature. (Excerpt)

Like many university leaders, Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has had her ups and downs with the faculty. She butted heads with some professors in her support for a now-dead plan to make the university system into a more autonomous public authority, for example, but earned faculty praise when she defended professors against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s suggestion that faculty members might be shirking their teaching responsibilities. But perhaps no time in Blank's two-year tenure has been rockier than right now, with the faculty in uproar over a legislative plan to eliminate tenure from state statute, greatly broaden the circumstances under which tenured faculty members may be fired, and limit the legal definition of shared governance. While Blank has no ties to the proposed legislative language, faculty members have called her out on social media and elsewhere for what they see as her failure to sufficiently defend them from the Legislature. In response to the proposed changes, some faculty members have said they’re pursuing faculty positions in other states, where the future of tenure and shared governance as they know it is more certain.The criticism of Blank has come despite a series of statements she has made affirming the importance of faculty rights...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/09/wisconsin-madison-chancellor-vows-protect-academic-freedom-tenure
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/06/one-thing-seems-to-follow-another-in.html
---

Prof. John R. Commons: U of Wisconsin's largely forgotten (abandoned?) academic legacy.

http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1989/05/art4full.pdf 

If the program founded by Commons and carried out by his successors had remained in place at the university, it's more likely that someone would have tracked the direction state politics were taking before they reached this point. Just a thought.

One thing seems to follow another in Wisconsin

At least if they're running, they don't need a walker

Inside Higher Ed has an article on the political problems of the U of Wisconsin: [excerpt]

It’s been a tumultuous year for faculty members within the University of Wisconsin System, from threats to the Wisconsin Idea to a proposed $300 million budget cut to Governor Scott Walker’s suggestion that professors do more work to compensate for the slash. But many professors and other observers said the roller coaster hit a new low Friday afternoon when the state Legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee approved, by a vote of 12-4, the elimination of tenure from state statute, along with adding new limits to the faculty role in shared governance and procedures for eliminating faculty members in good standing outside of financial exigency. Members of the committee said the changes -- proposed in a budget motion -- would give Wisconsin public institutions the flexibility needed to deal with the budget cut, which they also voted to reduce to $250 million over two years from $300 million. But others interpreted the motion as an attack on tenure and the traditionally strong system of shared governance in the state, which they said will cost the university system and the state in the long run...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/01/wisconsin-faculty-incensed-motion-eliminate-tenure-state-statute

UPDATE: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/08/wisconsin-board-adopts-tenure-rules-dont-satisfy-professors

Apparently, it didn't smell right

Inside Higher Ed pointed yours truly to the item below (excerpt):

Republicans in the Legislature abandoned a proposal Tuesday by GOP Gov. Scott Walker to spin off the University of Wisconsin System as a separate government authority, but said they are committed to giving campuses more flexibility to manage budget cuts. The co-chairs of the Legislature's budget committee — Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) — said they hoped to reduce Walker's proposed $300 million in cuts, but they didn't know by how much. They are awaiting estimates this week that will tell them whether revenue will be higher than earlier projections...

Their announcement came the same day two business groups in Milwaukee and Madison urged lawmakers to limit any cuts to UW to avoid harm to the state's economy. "As the governor's budget works through the legislative process, we encourage lawmakers to keep in mind the important role the instruction, research and workforce training happening on campuses across the state play in building our economy," said a statement from Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce...

Full story at http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walkers-proposed-cut-to-owi-treatment-tops-panels-agenda-b99493883z1-302562311.html

Inside Higher Ed summary at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/05/06/wisconsin-governors-higher-ed-autonomy-plan-killed

The guv's proposal apparently didn't smell right. Still, undoubtedly, there are those who find it appealing: