As part of Governor Walker’s budget proposal to reduce state support of the University of Wisconsin System by $300 million, the university is supposed to gain additional flexibility in operations and the expiration of the tuition freeze in 2017.
Under Walker’s proposal this year, the Legislature would have no ability to stop the university from raising tuition as much as it wants starting in 2017.
But apparently the governor had too much time to mull the plan over and decided he didn’t like the idea of the university setting it’s own tuition…so he’s already changed his mind:
Gov. Scott Walker raised the prospect Thursday of limiting tuition increases at University of Wisconsin schools to inflation after his proposed freeze expires in two years.
That set the stage for a debate over whether imposing a cap on resident undergraduate tuition once the UW System were spun off from the state as an autonomous public authority would immediately take back a critical part of that authority.
Tuition has been frozen by Walker and the Legislature since the 2013-’14 school year and Walker wants to extend that through 2016-’17. On Thursday, he said he was open to putting a lid on future tuition increases — even though he has proposed giving tuition authority to the UW System and its Board of Regents as part a new UW System Public Authority.
This has got nothing to do with finance or the economy or education. This is all about power!
This is classic neo-conservative policy making: Defund something, and then limit the ability of said institution to raise funds in any meaningful way. So much for giving them any “tools” to be autonomous.
Also classic Walker divide-and-conquer:
1) Cut state funding to UW to manufacture UW budget hole
2) Get folks talking about tuition increase to solve UW budget
3) UW students get mad
4) Hope UW students get mad at their schools and/or Regents and not Walker
5) Walker swoops in with tuition freeze, reinforcing that he’s the good guy
A “tuition freeze” sounds too nice and leaves out the crucial detail of the state funding cut. If Walker pushes ahead with this, Dems need to be framing this as an “unfunded mandate.”
Imagine a bizzaro world where a state mandate on UW tuition was backed up with sufficient funding instead of cutting from both ends (something for DPW to run on)…
+ $50M/yr in state funding and in-state tuition to all 13 2-yr campuses could be FREE
+ $89M/yr and in-state undergrad tuition at all 26 campuses could be CUT 10%
+$221M/yr and in-state undergrad tuition at all 26 campuses could be CUT 25%
+$442M/yr and in-state undergrad tuition at all 26 campuses could be CUT 50%
+$690M/yr and in-state undergrad tuition at all campuses but Madison could be FREE