UW System facing cuts
The UW System leader is calling for academic cuts and layoffs to survive in the post-pandemic world.
The leader of the University of Wisconsin System unveiled Thursday a three-part plan that radically re-imagines the network of schools that has been in place for a half-century.
President Ray Cross, declaring that immediate action is crucial to the survival of the System, called for consolidating academic programs, streamlining business operations and scaling up online degree programs across the state.
The proposal requires all campuses except for UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, to complete a review of academic offerings by the end of 2020, opening the way for program cuts, staff reductions and new investment to “provide greater institutional distinctiveness and identity.”
It also requires campuses to more rapidly centralize administrative functions — like IT and human resources — and calls for the creation of a uniform online learning model that can serve working adults and traditional undergraduates.
The proposal was presented to the Board of Regents on Thursday afternoon.
In an interview with reporters prior to making the plan public, Cross said there was no “magic number” he was hoping to reach in terms of cuts or cost savings.
Cross's plan calls for universities to revise or update their mission statements. He echoed the words of UW-Stevens
Point Chancellor Bernie Patterson from less than two years ago, saying that each comprehensive university in the UW System could not keep being “all things to all people.”
“If we want the system to survive on the other side of this pandemic ... we've got to act now,” Cross said. “We just don't have the time.”
Campuses will retain “basic” courses like English, Cross said, but they will be encouraged to develop their own specialties and work with other universities when collaboration makes sense. In other words, a student at UW-Eau Claire might major in a subject that its faculty has developed into a strength, but might also take unrelated online courses not based in Eau Claire to progress toward a degree.
“It is possible that there will be minimal cuts on one campus and larger program reductions on others,” Cross said.
With the changes, Cross said, will come employee cuts.
“We don't know the impact of COVID-19, but there is a growing, clear sense that we must make serious reductions in order to be viable and to offer a quality education,” Cross said.
“Layoffs will be inevitable,” he said.
Financial challenges mounting
Cross' push for change comes as colleges and universities across the country fear for their existence in a post-pandemic world. This week, Holy Family College, a small, Catholic school in Manitowoc, became the first school of higher learning in Wisconsin to announce it would close.
It also comes before the most recent push for consolidation — linking the two-year and four-year campuses — has even been fully implemented. Cross, who is scheduled to retire this year, said that’s not enough.
Asked if any UW schools were at risk of closing due to financials, Cross said no, because they were part of the larger system.
“If some of these were individual campuses, we’d be looking at this differently, or they would be,” he said.
Cross acknowledged the timeline to reevaluate and implement academic programs changes by the fall of 2021 is “pretty aggressive.”
But financial challenges campuses face are also rapidly mounting.
Campus leaders already have been grappling with major losses, starting with room and board refunds in the millions, the costs of moving to online or remote learning, and dwindling revenues from social and sports events.
Most UW schools have implemented employee furloughs.
Many campus leaders told the Journal Sentinel over the past months that money from the CARES Act aimed at supporting campus operations — $47 million across the System — would help offset those costs.
But then Gov. Tony Evers announced a 5% state spending cut that would require one-time paybacks by the end of June. Estimates of that cost have been floating around the system since: UW-Oshkosh and UWEau Claire are planning for $2.5 million, UW-Milwaukee $6 million to $8 million and UW-Madison nearly $20 million.
On Wednesday, the state Department of Administration confirmed that it was seeking $45.8 million from the UW System, threatening to wipe out any gains campuses may have anticipated from CARES Act stimulus.
Fast, centralized changes
The financial struggles at several campuses, combined with projected enrollment declines nationally beginning in 2026, had already forced university campuses to consider how they would attract the students of the future.
But this plan calls for fast, centralized changes. Campus autonomy is cherished in the UW System and enshrined in the state statutes, which requires the Board of Regents to “promote the widest degree of institutional autonomy” within the constraints of system and board policies.
But in this situation there are strengths in a more centralized approach, Cross said, allowing system leaders to look at where programs and services are redundant across campuses.
Board approval will be required along the way, especially if campuses change their mission.
Investment in new programs, including online degree programs, will be key for preparing for the future, he added. Those programs will seek to expand the reach of programs the public colleges are known for, especially to the growing number of “non-traditional” students, including adult learners. Cross said the system currently only captures 5% to 8% of the market share in the upper Midwest.
“Other national institutions have invested heavily in marketing their online programs while we have been hesitant,” Cross said. “We must accelerate now, or risk being left behind, perhaps for good.”
Regents, faculty weigh in
Many faculty were quick to express their displeasure with the plan Thursday. Nick Fleisher, an associate professor at UWM and president of the American Association of University Professors-Wisconsin, said the plan was had “no educational merit.”
“Ray Cross’s plan is to have the UW regional comprehensive campuses compete against each other for the right to house various programs,” Fleisher said. “Regents and legislators have talked about this for several years, and now they are taking advantage of the pandemic to try to do it.“
In a virtual board meeting Thursday, several regents spoke in favor of the plan.
Regent Karen Walsh questioned Cross on how the system would proceed with the plan without “mowing down shared governance in the process.”
“I’d hate to see us lose part of what makes us a great university system, the input of the faculty and staff,” Walsh said.
Cross said there would be possibilities to engage faculty and stakeholder groups.
But some faculty were not convinced. “There’s simply no way that can happen in anything like a thoughtful way on the timeline proposed by President Cross,” Matt Jewell, a professor at UW-Eau Claire, said. “It’s not just a matter of faculty having their say. This kind of reorganization requires input from the businesses, organizations, and communities we serve, in addition to the students and families who have already made clear their idea of the ideal size of each UW school by voting with their feet and attending those institutions.”
Contact Devi Shastri at 414-224-2193 or DAShastri@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.