Photo illustration credit: Gage Skidmore
After 60 years of hard work and dedication, UW-Milwaukee has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as one of America’s top-tier research universities. This “R-1” ranking goes to only 2% of all U.S. universities and is awarded for excellence in faculty research and graduate programs and the accomplishments of its alumni. Milwaukee and Wisconsin have been honored in national publications for building and supporting such an outstanding academic institution.
This national recognition may be short-lived due to the long series of reductions in UWM’s operating budget and a prolonged tuition freeze. The high return on educational investment represented by this award should be grounds to increase the UWM budget. Instead, the policies put forward by Gov. Scott Walker and a Republican-led state legislature risk losing in a few short years the achievements of a lifetime. UWM is experiencing significant faculty losses, larger class sizes and higher student costs due to delays in degree completion. All these losses will have a negative impact when Carnegie conducts its next analysis of the campus. If this hard-won recognition is lost, the national story will be one of condemnation: Why did Wisconsin squander such an achievement?
Loss of Faculty
Despite the high quality of life in the Milwaukee metropolitan area, the exodus of UWM faculty has begun. Outstanding people have been lost because of dramatically shrinking state support. Competing universities have offered more stable jobs, often with much higher salaries, along with support for research and financing of national and international collaborations.
Since 2010, the number of tenured and tenure-track professors in the physics department is down 24% (from 26 to 19). The story is the same in biological science—from 38 down to 26. The economics department has lost 26 % of its faculty; educational psychology 48%; history 27%. One measure of the quality lost is to look at where they have all gone: UCLA, Minnesota, Tufts, Texas A&M, North Carolina, Ohio State and Duke. Not a single program has been immune. All university stakeholders—students, parents, donors, business collaborators, alumni—should be alarmed.
Background for Growth
UWM’s growth into a top-tier research university was envisioned from the early 1960s by both Republican and Democratic governors and educators. Excellence was demanded—jump-started by recruiting established professors from major universities, along with promising newly minted PhDs. All were hired with competitive compensation and support for their ambition to contribute to their discipline.
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They would be evaluated using academic standards based on performance review by their professional peers. These standards were, and remain, essential ingredients to building and maintaining a great university—one with faculty, graduate and undergraduate students working at the frontiers of knowledge in cutting-edge programs.
Incredibly, the current political leadership in Madison no longer appears to recognize the critical importance of having two public research universities, even though they are both crucial to Wisconsin’s ability to compete in the world economy. Cutting-edge teaching and research in Milwaukee—Wisconsin’s largest city and its the center of the state’s economic engine— contribute strongly to economic development, precisely the role UWM has so successfully played. It is clearly counter-productive to demolish this human capital asset; Wisconsin’s ability to thrive in the 21st century will be diminished. The next generation will need more education, not less.
Impact on Students
A recent College Board study titled “Education Pays 2016” shows that the return on investment in college has never been greater. Although job and wage growth rates for college graduates hashave fallen somewhat since the Great Recession, the situation for non-college graduates has been much worse, and so the gap has widened. A college degree remains the single most effective credential for entry into meaningful middle-class careers.
Numbered among UWM’s graduates are architects, artists, business executives, educators, engineers, entertainers, healthcare professionals, religious leaders and scientists. Many of these were the first in their family to attend college; some from low-income and poverty-level families needed loans and part-time employment while enrolled. In many instances, UWM was the only university they could afford to attend. It was the only place available for them to learn of the excitement of discovery and the importance of life-long learning; and they had this opportunity at a first-rate research university.
The benefits of attending a strong research university are numerous, but many are not immediately obvious. Contrary to cynical beliefs, faculty members engaged in research in their discipline receive a disproportionate share of the teaching awards and accolades based on student evaluations. On reflection, this should not be surprising. The quest for discovery and new knowledge springs from passionate minds and generates excitement and optimism that are contagious.
In addition to exposing students to their research in the classroom, research professors exert a strong influence over the design of the curriculum, the design and implementation of teaching techniques, choice of textbooks, use of social media and the hiring and mentoring of new professors. The national research reputation of the professorial faculty greatly improves student chances of being accepted at top graduate, law and medical schools—and gaining employment with a major government agency, think tank, professional organization or corporation. These are the ingredients of upward mobility for so many young Wisconsin citizens.
Synergy with Economic Development
After years of sluggish job and wage growth, Wisconsin’s business community is understandably eager for the state’s economy to grow faster. They need well-trained employees. Accordingly, Wisconsin has invested in vocational schools and technical colleges that have an excellent track record for preparing and placing students in full-time employment. Of course, there must be multiple pathways to success for our youth. Nevertheless, the governor and legislature have expressed strong opinions that UW campuses should be repurposed to augment, if not duplicate, those existing institutions devoted to workforce development.
This confusion of institutional roles is contrary to the fact that UWM, as a top-tier research university, has always contributed mightily to economic development. UWM has always graduated a huge number of employees for the state’s businesses, large and small. Nearly 80% of its graduates remain in Wisconsin. Moreover, it is common for businesses to consult with campus faculty and staff whenever they need the expertise they lack. It takes decades to develop that expertise; it is the product of the rigorous academic evaluation process used to assess the performance of research professors.
A Coordinated National Attack on Higher Education?
The agenda put forward by our governor and legislature is strongly influenced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC). ALEC prepares template legislation with a radical bent, usually to squeeze money out of public institutions to finance “pro-growth” tax cuts. As the experience of Kansas and Wisconsin demonstrates, those states that rely on ALEC’s advice grow more slowly because they starve the public sector’s ability to invest in infrastructure and education.
It is easy to see why ALEC would want to downgrade universities: It is in those institutions where right-wing views on issues such as climate science and supply-side economics are shown to be without merit. Since they cannot compete based on ideas, they must promote the ruin of these institutions while distracting the public’s attention from what we are losing in the process. The danger with their intervention is that Wisconsin will lose a key engine of economic growth: the production of new knowledge and the spirit of discovery that produces it.
The rate of Wisconsin’s production of new knowledge will slow—as will its capacity to house (i.e., to understand, explain and apply) the knowledge produced in the wider world. But the brain drain extends beyond the research laboratories of the university: Professionals who might have come here to participate in that inquiry and discovery—whether as faculty or employees of advanced manufacturing and high-technology firms—will simply choose not to locate here. Young people who aspire to professional lives will go elsewhere for a brighter future for themselves, and they will make their contribution there instead of here.
Some of the cuts might make sense if there were a lot of fat in the UWM budget. There is none. A 2010 report on the costs of a university education by the Goldwater Institute found UWM to be one of the most efficient, high-valued universities in the nation. The place has been running on a shoestring for years. Now the shoestring is being frayed to the point of breaking.
Wrong Management Model, Wrong Leadership
To add to the folly, the government insists on imposing a business model on the university system. Apparently, the Board of Regents as well as Gov. Walker and his Republican colleagues in the legislature assume that something is terribly wrong with the UW system—even though it houses two Carnegie R-1 universities and has been known as one of the best state university systems in the U.S. They insist that, by making the system run more like a business, somehow whatever problems they perceive will be solved. Their plan is to install successful business executives into high university administrative posts without regardless of whether these individuals have little or no work experience or qualifications in higher education other that having been students in their youth.regard to their experience in higher education.
In most instances, the regents are successful members of the Wisconsin business and legal communities. They are far more likely to be attuned to the nuances of business organizations than to those of academic institutions. Authority in most business organizations tends to be top-down, with those at the top taking risks with their own time and money, thereby earning the right to direct employees.
Accordingly, the regents have a hard time understanding why faculty cannot be managed by university administrators. They envision faculty as “employees” and “subordinates” to administrators—even though most of those “bosses” have no understanding of what those faculty do in their research or in the classroom. The reason is that, in universities, professors normally know far more about their work than administrators. Consequently, the true job of a university administrator is to facilitate the work of the faculty, not try to lead it.
Moreover, evaluation of faculty research work relies on “peer review”—the rigorous process conducted by scholars throughout the world qualified to judge the research output of university professors. The top-down authoritarian business model being implemented at the UW system will disrupt this natural relationship between faculty, administration and the international community of scholars.
Disruption can be great for society, especially when new products or processes are introduced into the marketplace to supplant less efficient ones, but this new alternative “business” model will not advance teaching or research at the university, rather it will retard growth and stifle creativity and innovation—the very life blood of our economy and economic wellbeing. essence of the contribution that the university makes to society.
Just as a successful research enterprise must be bottom-up, the only successful means of assessment and evaluation of its outcomes derives from the harsh light of peer review, not from politically motivated evaluation.
The huge budget cuts and changes in academic oversight have already placed UWM at a serious competitive disadvantage in the fiercely competitive academic market for hiring and retaining faculty. Like all professional institutions, universities must meet or exceed market compensation and working conditions when competing for talent. Elsewhere in academia, compensation is going up, not down, as it has been in Wisconsin for the last decade. in WisconsinSimilarly, joint administrative-faculty governance of the university is central to the integrity and productivity of professors’ work; this is true for every university in the R-1 group.
Not Too Late to Reinvest and Recover
After so many years of successful growth at UWM, the R-1 Carnegie ranking should highlight the folly opportunity lost by of dismantling this great state asset. ItContinued underfunding of UWM devalues the investment and expectations of past taxpayers, diminishes the lifework of dedicated faculty and staff, squanders the generosity of Milwaukee’s business leaders and philanthropists and dims the prospects for students.
All beneficiaries of this threatened institution should act now to demand that UWM’s budget more accurately reflect the high quality and importance of the work taking place on campus. It is not too late to rebuild UWM; but it will require significant state financial reinvestment to replace faculty lost to competition and to retain the coveted Carnegie Foundation R-1 designation.
William Holahan is emeritus professor and former chair of the Department of Economics at UWM. Charles O. Kroncke served as professor and associate dean of business at UW-Madison, as well as dean of the school of business at UWM and the school of management at UT-Dallas. They are co-authors of Economics for Voters: 30 Issues for the 2012 Presidential Election.
