With a new school year, ALEC/GOP and Walker's Regents continue assault on UW System

As the new academic year begins at the campuses across the University of Wisconsin System, some campuses have been dealing with adjustments to their curriculum after 7 years of budget cuts and GOP demands to have the System feed the needs of corporate Wisconsin.

UW-Stevens Point was one of the biggest examples of this kind of “disruption”, and they announced last Spring that they would handle a $4.5 million budget deficit by cutting degree programs in 13 humanities-based majors and move toward the math, science and engineering majors favored by corporations.

Bad enough, and it was partly as a result of UWSP losing students before this year.

Then Point's enrollment for 2018-19 dropped again, to around 7,700, and we found out that up to 70 more Stevens Point workers may be losing their jobs. This is partly due to that lower enrollment and another change imposed by the System’s pro-GOP “leadership.”

Greg Summers, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said enrollment decline is a continuing trend at the school and cutting up to 70 positions is a worst-case scenario.

"So the instructional staff doesn’t need to be as large as it once did, and we’re looking at how to make those adjustments to match the enrollment level that we currently have," he said, adding the position cuts would not be limited to instructors.

Summers attributes most of the continued decline to students graduating faster or opting to go into the workforce straight out of high school because of low unemployment.

While that’s good for students, Summers said UW-Stevens Point has a structural deficit and needs to think about its long-term finances, which are already under pressure as it absorbs two-year schools UW-Marathon County and UW-Marshfield/Wood County in a major UW System restructuring.

It’s imperative the school reconciles spending and revenue, Summers said.

Huh, maybe UW President Ray Cross and the Walker-stacked Board of Regents shouldn’t have been so quick to jam through that merger of UW Colleges and the 4-year campuses back last November, eh? Especially since there was only 10 months to put the merger together after sneaking through the plan with little time to discuss it in public.

(fun fact- GOP Congressional candidate/Walker-chosen Regent Bryan Steil said at that November meeting as saying the merger was “the start of hard work.” Easy for you to say, pretty boy).

The merger was especially reckless because it was done after the State Legislature had decided on the 2017-19 State Budget, meaning that there would not be adequate funding this year to cover any kind of funding and operational issues that might come up due to the merger. And now UWSP is looking to cut more staff because of the drop in attendance, which may well be related to the lack of humanities studies at the school.

So what does Gov Dropout plan to do to deal with this downward spiral? Keep it going, of course! Walker is still promising to keep UW System in-state tuition at the same frozen level that it’s been at for the last 6 years, and is also likely to continue to not back up that freeze with state funding, leaving the universities to try to come up with the money on their own.

But of course, this is the plan, isn’t it? Tie the hands of the state’s university system in what is studied and what is discussed, then make any crumbs of state funding that might help to keep the university functional dependent on the needs of the politicians in charge. And if the politicians are puppets of regressive corporations (like most of WisGOP is these days), but the A great example is the Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy at UW-Madison, which is mostly funded by the Kochs and the Bradley Foundation.

And what comes out of that Koched-up research is then used by those puppet politicians as “proof” for their wrong-headed policies. Case in point from this week.

To: Liberal Democrats/Socialists:

From:. UW Madison Researchers

"A 1% permanent increase in the state individual income tax rate would initially lower per capita personal income growth by about 0.9% and total tax revenue by about 1%-4%."
https://t.co/zvh0A6QGZA

— Robin Vos (@repvos) September 10, 2018

I got a chance to look at this “study” (you can read it for yourself here). It basically lines up all the states, doesn’t mention the time period that this GDP Growth took place, and then tries to say “well, the states with a lower-income tax structure did better.” In addition to being intentionally vague on the time period, this report doesn’t look into any other possible reason for GDP growth, such as population growth, demographics or region of the country, or whether those "growing" places started from a lower place. And it doesn’t take into account any other measure of a strong economy – job growth, incomes, poverty rates, etc.

It's the type of slanted, skin-deep garbage that would be lucky to survive a freshman Intro to Macro course, let alone be portrayed as legitimate professional research. And if the voters in this state don’t take the GOP out of power this November now watch GOP shills like Robbin’ Vos try to use this “evidence” claim that this means Wisconsin should go to a Confederate-style system that causes even more regressive taxation and lower services.

I have a bad feeling that I will be referring to this great cartoon from Isthmus’s Alan Talaga a lot in the near future.

It's the logical endgame of the Koch/ALEC agenda to make universities serve its rich benefactors and their regressive GOP-puppet politicians, while helping society and improving the skills of individuals is left to the back burner.