Cuts may reduce enrollment

The UW System would be forced to cut next fall’s enrollment by thousands of students if legislators do not roll back the latest round of cuts proposed by the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, Jay L. Smith, president of the UW Board of Regents warns.

In an unusually pessimistic message March 7, Smith says the UW System simply could not absorb cuts beyond Gov. Scott McCallum’s proposed $51 million budget reductions without drastically harming educational quality or student access.

Earlier, the finance panel voted to cap tuition increases at 8 percent and to cut state agency budgets overall by $23 million, some portion of which would be absorbed by the UW System.

If the tuition cap and further cuts are sustained in the final state budget, “the only recourse is to shut our doors to many deserving students,” Smith warns. “Otherwise, we may permanently jeopardize the quality education of which our citizens are so proud.”

Smith says UW System President Katharine Lyall will report next week on the status and impact of pending budget cuts. Smith says he may ask the regents to direct each UW campus to immediately begin sending “conditional letters of admission to all (qualified) applicants not yet accepted,” adding that “this would be an unprecedented measure, and one that we would prefer not to take.”

The regents’ legislative coordination team, led by Regent Fred Mohs, will “carry our message very clearly to friends in the Legislature,” Smith says. The UW System also plans to send a letter to every legislator, describing the potential seriousness of the budget cuts, he says.

The latest proposal, on top of McCallum’s proposed $51 million decrease, would follow a decade in which the UW has sustained $55 million in base budget cuts, Smith says.

Through it all, the UW System has expanded rather than cutting enrollments, enhancing educational access to Wisconsin students. To preserve the UW’s mission, “we have cut to the bone and beyond,” Smith asserts. Our university leaders “are talented managers, but they are not magicians,” he says.

Board members strongly support Smith’s comments, noting that the UW System’s role as an engine of economic development for Wisconsin is in jeopardy.

The UW “has been a catalyst for economic development,” observes Regent Roger Axtell.

These latest proposed cuts threaten to eliminate the UW’s ability to educate additional students in areas of greatest economic importance to Wisconsin, says Axtell, a former corporate executive.

UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Don Mash notes that the proposed tuition cap reduces educational opportunity but does not contribute to improving the state’s overall budget problem, because it generates no additional tax dollars to close the deficit.

While keeping tuition low is generally believed to help protect student access, in this case it will have the opposite effect because the UW will be forced to reduce the number of students it can serve, he says.

“The governor’s (proposed) cuts are not going to be easy to manage,” Lyall says. But she termed the potential for additional cuts “devastating.”