He pointed to data showing Wisconsin now spends $65,785 per degree granted, which is almost $10,000 less than the national average and lower than all other states in the Upper Midwest.
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Hesselbein, who sits on the Assembly’s higher education committee, supports UW’s budget request and said any further cuts to its funding would threaten the system’s quality. Walker and Republican lawmakers froze in-state undergraduate tuition in the 2013-15 state budget after it was found schools were sitting on massive reserves while raising tuition year after year.
The Board of Regents is expected to approve the request at a meeting this month.
UW System President Ray Cross released an outline of the system’s budget request Tuesday morning, calling for a $42.5 million funding increase over two years for programs that Cross says will help students graduate sooner and strengthen Wisconsin’s economy.
Walker will present his budget proposal early next year.
“My belief is that the state, if they’re going to freeze that source of revenue, should fund it”, Schmidt said.
“It would be modest if there was a tuition increase”, Cross said.
The preview Cross gave on Monday did not specify how the new funding would be allocated if lawmakers include it, or how it would be distributed among UW campuses.
But it does provide a sense of what UW will ask of legislators in the coming months – namely, an end to years of budget cuts that Cross notes has seen state funding for higher education, when adjusted for inflation, fall to its lowest point since the system was founded in the 1970s.
“The state has had to deal with its economic challenges, and now it’s time to invest in the university”, Cross said. About 10 percent of UW’s requested budget increase would be in the form of performance-based funding, Cross said.
Still, he said the new funding would help UW campuses invest in areas such as advising where many institutions have cut back in recent years, and aims to ensure more graduates stay in the state by connecting them with businesses.
But Walker has championed the freeze as a commitment to college affordability, and says he will look to extend it. Cross says moving students through the pipeline remains a priority, due to the impact in can have on course offerings on campuses – which can in turn make it harder for students to graduate on time. “We think we can improve that”. He also noted that the system has lost about 1,200 employees.
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-$454.6 million for building maintenance, renovation and construction. A new mechanical engineering building at UW-Platteville would be the only new structure; the rest of the money would go toward renovations.
