Mark Green's Plan Would Hike UW Tuition and Wisconsin Taxes

Mark Green made it clear this week that he plans to hike tuition for Wisconsin residents attending the University of Wisconsin, and to increase taxes on Wisconsin residents to pay for the UW. While the cost to the entire UW System in unknown, the effects on just the Madison campus is significant.

If the Green plan went into effect this academic year, Wisconsin undergraduates would see their tuition increase from $6,284 to $7,284, graduate tuition would go up from $8738 to $10,738 and taxpayers would have to shell out more as well to support the UW.

The Green Plan Impact

Tuition Hike: That is a total of $32.52 million additional in tuition from Wisconsin students.                           

Taxe Hike: Wisconsin taxpayers presently paying $406,100,000 would shell out another $27,820,000.

Presently there are 19,233 resident undergraduates at the UW.  There are 9,225 non-residents and assuming Green wishes to cut that number in half to admit more Wisconsin residents,and not touch the Minnesota reciprocity agreement, the shortfall in revenue is approximately $60,339,000.* 

If we take the graduate school, 3005 residents and 5668 non-residents (lets ignore the 168 harmless Gophers) and return to a 50/50 split of in state/out of state, the tuition shortfall is $26,130,000.**

You do the math. Green  would increase the tuition of every Wisconsin undergraduate by $1000 and every Wisconsin graduate student by $2000. That would raise a total of $32,520,000 from Wisconsin students.

And it would still leave $27,820,00 for the Wisconsin taxpayers.

Go Mark Green.

The cost of education is far more complicated than Mark Green would lead us to believe, as is the enrollment issue. Here are some highlights:

• Because the Republicans dropped state support for the UW from 27% to 19% in less than ten years, student tuition has risen significantly, faculty salaries stagnated and buildings have deteriorated.
• Traditionally the UW has charged out-of-state students the cost of their education until the 1990's, when the school was forced to make money off of them as a result of state budget cuts.
• Cutting every out-of-state student and replacing them with an in-state student means someone has to come up with the difference.
• One of the reasons for the UW's outstanding academic record going back to the La Follette era has been the significant number of out-of-state students admitted to the UW which has helped the institution academically.
• The policy of charging out-of-state students a profitable tuition has had adverse ramifications for the entire UW population. Middle class out-of-state students can no longer afford to attend and that hurts the diversity of the campus.

*4612 out of state undergraduates paying $19,233 replaced by the same number of in state students paying $6150. **1332 out of state graduate students paying $28,458 replaced by the same number of Wisconsin graduate $8841 ***$23,845,000 (23,845X$1000) from the undergraduates and $8,674,000 (4337X$2000) from the graduate students.

Comments

[Clinton]

Man, my parents are going to be SO pissed that I didn't finish my education when I should have...

I really don't get it. Why is Green so adamant on replacing non-resident students with residents? Out-of-state students improve the diversity of the campus, create a healthy cashflow into the state from without (which is quite good for our economy), and are to some degree more motivated to be better students, because they're paying more to be there. They keep the campus from becoming stagnant from midwestern isolation, they make an education for our in-state kids cheaper, and they have a great incentive to make the university look good. It's win-win.

I really can't think of any reason why we want to edge them out. (Maybe it's just xenophobia.)

Is there a website somewhere where Green's plan is laid out? I'd like to take a look at the whole thing, if I could.

[Matt]

First, what fraction of grad students actually pay tuition? If you're an RA or a TA (which covers pretty much everyone in science/engineering), then that money comes from the pockets of someone in your department, not your own. In the end, a big chunk of the increased tuition will be borne by reduced available funding for research/equipment.

Second, I was under the impression that out of state students (undergrads) are *less* qualified than in-staters, but I don't think the UW releases segregated statistics. I don't have a strong objection to that per se -- someone's gotta pay the bills -- but if true, that would undercut your fourth bullet point.

[Paul]

OK, forget about the grad students completely. We still have 'only' a $40 million problem.

Go to the following UW links and you will find a zillion pieces of data that show all sorts of interesting tidbits about the UW, including the fact that out of state students are as qualified, if not more than, in state students.

http://www.bpa.wisc.edu/datadigest/
http://www.wisc.edu/about/facts/

http://www.uc.wisc.edu/almanac.html

[Matt]

Wow, that's one heck of a data dump! Thanks for the links. Unfortunately I couldn't find any smoking gun regarding admissions standards for in/out of state students. Don't worry, I'm sure you were qualified, despite being *ahem* from Illinois.

Don't get me wrong, I think the great state university of Wisconsin should be funded to the hilt. I now work at NC State, and the state constitution here mandates that tuition here should be as close to free as practicable. Of course it's nowhere near free, but it's still a noble ideal.

Back to the annual reports: I'm happy to see that my super-obscure major (AMEP) has increased 50% in enrollment since I graduated. What really freaks me out is that Nova Southeastern U awarded more PhDs than we did. Who the heck is that?!

[Dan Sebald]

RA and TA tuition grants is a relatively new thing. When I started at the UW, yes quite some time ago (roughly 15 years) we paid our own tuition. But heck, it was so affordable that I wasn't too concerned. Other schools were reimbursing tuition long before the UW was. And from what I remember, in the transition to tuition reimbursement I think we lost something, cut in pay or no more free health care plan... I can't recall what exactly. But it wasn't like all of a sudden TAs and RAs received a huge windfall.

I talked with someone in Baltimore recently about NC education, and he too stated this idea of practically "free". That is sort of what the UW has traditionally been. Comparing what I paid and what numbers Paul has posted, I think it is almost a factor of four--in fifteen years!

The Republican controlled State Legislature is destroying the UW System. That is the irony of Mark Green's commercials. And let's remember these are just commercials. Does Green really want to do anything about the UW? Only he knows. The thing about the Republican Party is that they have across the board jumped on the Rove strategy of duplicity. Tell voters one thing and really mean another, e.g., "save" social security. I can't believe anything anymore come from Republicans or the phony governmental stats.

Green's campaign team has obviously picked a topic where they can appeal to the "one-of-us" feel good crowd, that is the main idea. They have him sitting on the bench at a high school sporting event chatting with neighbors who are all worried about the price of education: "our kids", "our state", etc. It's more about appeal and getting elected... But it works. Tell people what they want to hear and they keep voting against their own interests. (Clinton is right about diversity. Too much "our state" and "our culture" stuff isn't what I want for the UW.)

I look at the UW now and see a cottage industry of bringing students in to pay high prices, live in expensive dormitories, etc. The middle and lower classes are priced out, or saddled with so much debt by time they graduate that life from there on looks like never ending drudgery. What is lost in all this is the idea that the UW is meant to *educate* our youth, in-state and out-of-state. Even being an alum, I'm not going to call UW best in anything, education wise. But it does provide, like many institutions, the opportunity to pursue any track you choose to and to find out what you are good at in life.

Note that the UW is a land-grant institution (and so is NC State, if I recall) which is by writ obligated to affordable education for all classes. That is why I don't like seeing more and more privately funded buildings on campus and less and less support from the State Legislature. What Green should be saying is "I want the State Legislature to increase its support for the UW to uphold the tradition of land grants and pay homage to the parents who's taxes have paid for the school throughout the years."

I'd say Doyle's record isn't that great either. I mean, if he thinks he's going to just keep using the line item veto more creatively, that's just bad politics. Let's toss that line item veto before progressive ideals hinge too much on it, and let's get back to building a base of politicians who honestly want to maintain a progressive education for our youth.

[Big Bill]

My, my. How the worm turns. A hundred years ago, it was Progressive to think about our state and our culture. It was called The Wisconsin Idea.

I would cite chapter and verse from Belle and Bob LaFolette (or dozens of others of the era) about the central role the UW must play in Wisconsin, but I fear their concern about Wisconsin and its people would make them sound like white racist neofascists to you hip Madisonians nowadays.

Th Wisconsin economy is crumbling, Wisconsin workers are losing decent manufacturing jobs, and the best "Wisconsin Idea" y'all can come up with is filling the UW with Chinese and Indian students to teach them everything we know so they can start factories back in their homelands andsell us cheap WalMart imports.

But at least hip Madisonians will have the comfort of knowing their college is "diverse".

You just don't get it. It is painfully obvious to us that you like your hip cool friends ffrom out of town better than us. We are an embarrassment to you. Farmers, salesmen, wives, mothers, small town dwellers. We are a pretty pathetic bunch compared with all the kool kids from New York, New Jersey, LA, Chicago, Bangalore and Shanghai you COULD go to school with if only we would do the decent thing -- curl up and die.

You see, UW is not about Wisconsin any more. It is an educational franchise that just happens to be plopped down in Madison. It is all about reputation, quality of worldwide student base, and bidding for academic superstars, who, like high-priced whores, will demand more and more and more until they finally break the bank. And the UW administration in their quest for name brand profs (who really don't give a sh!t about the state or its people anyway), act like some Board of Directors hustling some waaayyy overpriced CEO, paying them whatever it takes to get them to Madison and telling the rest of us how lucky we are to have this arrogant @sshole prof.

And we Wisconsin hillbillies are just ignorant neanderthal hicks who, like the morons we are, just don't want to cough up for your dreams of the Big Leagues.

If you brought more value to the state insteadd of your own reputations perhaps we would pay you more. Unfortunately, you haven't done a hell of a lot lately. Support an engineering college that educates foreigners to build factories overseas when according to BLS statistics there have not been any new engineering jobs for the last four years? Why?

[Dan Sebald]

To whomever Big Bill is, please tell us your involvement with the University of Wisconsin system. Were you a student there? Did you teach there?

I believe your accusations are way off base. I have had some very good professors at the UW, and a few bad. It is like that everywhere. But to portray professors as you have is just ridiculous.

And please hold back the "my, my" attitude, and then essentially turn around and claim peoples comments are something they are not. Not one person denigrated farmers or mothers. (I've been to campus planning meetings and spoken out about the agriculture portion of campus getting squeezed.)

You have one good additional point in all this which is the downtrend of the economy and the problem of getting too many foreign and out of state students. As with most things, striking the right balance is the issue.

Also, how is it that professors are responsible for the ill effects of NAFTA and such? That goes back to the people you and I are voting for. Corporations are the ones moving facilities overseas.

[claudia bowens]

why can,t we get help from yhe president?

[claudia bowens]

he get gives help two other people but he won,t even talk two us about are back taxes