Evers can stop the bleeding at UW. But is it already too late?

Among the many reasons I’m happy over the election of Tony Evers as governor of Wisconsin is that he has a chance to stop and reverse the damage that Scott Walker and his hand-picked Board of Regents has done to our University of Wisconsin System over the last 8 years.

The Wisconsin State Journal mentioned today that Evers will get the opportunity to put a majority of his appointees onto the Board. You can bet that a man with 3 degrees from UW-Madison that is currently the Superintendent of Schools in the state will be more interested in helping the UW compared to a Dropout Governor that frequently derided “Madison liberals” and academics.

Over Evers’ four-year term that begins Jan. 7, he will replace at least 10 of the 18 seats on the Board of Regents, but a handful of circumstances — an election win by a fellow board member [Congressman-elect Brian Steil], a vacancy already on the board and what happens with his own seat on the board as state superintendent of public instruction — could mean Evers may appoint an even greater number of people sympathetic to his higher education platform. It could also mean Walker may move quickly to fill those seats, one that has set a record-breaking long vacancy at nearly 11 months.

As the state’s schools chief, Evers automatically holds a seat on the board. S. Mark Tyler, the Wisconsin Technical College System Board president, also serves as an “ex-officio” member of the board by the nature of his position.

But every other Regent on the 18-member board is appointed by the governor. Fourteen seats, all currently held by Walker appointees, serve staggered, seven-year terms. The two other Regents are students selected by the governor to serve two-year terms.

He won't get to finish this job.

To get an idea of the approach that Walker’s appointees had, let me remind you of what Board President John Behling said in late 2015, as the Regents voted to eradicate tenure. Behling claimed that academia should be more like the corporate world that cranks out widgets.

Tenure may be the standard in higher education, but it is out of step with reality for most workers in other sectors. They can lose their jobs for a wide variety of reasons without recourse. This disconnect has led many to see tenure as simply a "job for life," a scenario in which faculty members keep their jobs even if their departments are eliminated or their performance is lacking.

Tenure is a critical bedrock of higher education because it ensures faculty have the freedom to express their views and direct their research without being targeted by their university leadership or colleagues. Every major university in this country has a strong tenure policy, and if Wisconsin does not, we will lose standing, we will lose faculty and we will lose the advantages our universities provide our economy.

But we also must have a tenure policy that includes accountability and rewards performance. We need policies that protect faculty from unnecessary pressures but also provide flexibility for our campuses. Our institutions must be able to operate more like modern private and nonprofit sector organizations that, in challenging and often unpredictable times, respond to changing market forces, demographics, trends and demands.

Who makes those decisions, Johnny? Is it a bunch of corporate sleaze who don’t want critical thinking to be developed and inconvenient truths to be discussed? And what happens when those “trends and demands” change in the future, and different skills are needed, and the UW System doesn’t have faculty and programs in place to deal with those changes because “market forces” didn’t want them today?

Behling had a similarly dismissive attitude regarding the end of tenure and the ability to get rid of disfavored academic programs. He claimed “that’s how it would work in the corporate world,” and said it was a good way to deal with the budget constraints imposed by Walker and the WisGOP Legislature.

The public has expressed serious concerns about how tenure is practiced in Wisconsin. In response, the state Legislature and [G]overnor Walker have given the Board of Regents critical tools to update and reform our policies on tenure. Using this new authority, we are proposing a new policy that creates common-sense guidelines for how tenure is practiced at UW System institutions and continues to treat our faculty with respect while making reasonable allowances for accountability.

A common complaint about tenure is that faculty members are not laid off when the programs they teach are discontinued. Our new policy proposal empowers chancellors to discontinue programs as necessary for educational or financial reasons, and, if absolutely necessary, it allows for faculty in those programs to be laid off. This is an important tool for chancellors and the Board of Regents.

Boy are those words prophetic. Since the end of 2015, we have seen UW-Superior suspend 40 programs in the last 4 years, and just last month UW-Oshkosh announced plans to remove adjunct faculty from teaching classes, and put more burdens on full-time faculty.

And this morning, we saw this headline in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “UW-Stevens Point rolls out transformation that would cut 6 humanities degrees, focus on careers”.

Proclaiming the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point no longer can be all things to all people, Chancellor Bernie Patterson on Monday proposed eliminating six humanities majors and transforming the school into “a new kind of regional university” that infuses the liberal arts into career-minded majors.

It’s not known whether the proposed “restructuring around our strengths” model could be a blueprint for retrenching other regional UWs as all campuses face tight budgets, and enrollments generally are stagnant or declining.

Last spring, it appeared the central Wisconsin campus with 7,725 students was headed toward phasing out 13 low-demand humanities majors to reduce its nearly $8 million structural deficit. Students protested, faculty were outraged, and national media headlines suggested Wisconsin was killing the humanities.

The chancellor’s proposal released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before a campuswide meeting Monday whittles down the cut to six low-demand humanities majors: French, German, history, geology, geography and two degree programs within art (two-dimensional and three-dimensional art).

Because what has history, geology, societies around the world (which is what geography generally studies) or art ever done for the world? Why would anyone want to understand those types of things in their careers and daily lives? #headdesk

You can click here to see how UW-Stevens Point officials are trying to sell this as a "new type of regional university". They claim that arts and humanities will be "base classes" taken as part of the completion of other majors. Now you can believe that this idea is an improvement if you want, but when you have fewer majors in the humanities, you have less of a choice of classes in those subjects, and you have less incentive for professors and other instructors to want to go to or stay at Stevens Point.

This goes right along with the ALEC agenda of "transforming" higher education to fit the needs of business, and was well described and covered in this movie, which included the UW as one of the places where this corporatization was taking place.

You know what I think is a better idea instead of these "transformations"? Get John Behling, UW System President Ray Cross and the rest of this Wrecking Crew off of the Board of Regents and out of System leadership ASAP. And Evers should work to get people in there that care more about the universities and the students than the politicians.

It’s time to get our UW back to being an institution whose agenda improves the quality of life for ALL Wisconsinites, not just the needs of a connected, corporate few. Electing Evers was a good first step, but there's a long way to go after 8 years in Fitzwalkerstan.