WHITEWATER-Like many of you, I am concerned about the state budget process that has begun in earnest again with a conference committee hoping to reach a compromise on budgets with significantly different priorities.
As interim chancellor at UW-Whitewater, I am of course concerned about how the proposed budgets will affect our entire campus community. But mostly, I am worried about how the budget as proposed by the state Assembly would hurt our students.
Based on a review of the Assembly's proposed 2007-09 budget, UW-Whitewater would have to cut $2.1 million in services each year of the two-year budget to meet the reductions proposed. These would be permanent cuts.
The real-life effect of that level of funding reduction on a campus such as UW-Whitewater, where we've already made massive cuts and have done an excellent job of managing our existing resources, would be devastating to our students.
For instance, in a worst-case scenario, to cut $2.1 million we would be forced to eliminate some 42 employees. As many as 20 faculty or instructional academic staff members would lose their jobs. Our faculty members carry teaching loads of four courses per semester.
The math on this is simple. To eliminate 20 teaching positions would mean offering 160 fewer sections of courses to students each academic year. And the reduction of class sections means students will have a more difficult time finishing their degrees in a timely fashion.
Students at UW-Whitewater have come to expect that they won't be forced into huge lecture halls to be taught by teaching assistants. Our campus is not designed to handle large lecture sessions, and requiring these sessions denies students the experience they expect from this campus.
Paul Sanchez, a student and former Whitewater Student Government president, said that he could have gone to a larger institution, but he selected UW-Whitewater in part because of the small class size. This Assembly budget endangers the quality of educational experience for Paul and other students.
I am also concerned about the huge decrease in financial aid for our students. Currently the typical UW-Whitewater student graduates with $17,000 in student loans. Most of our students work, many with two and three jobs, and take out loans to fund their educations.
Do we really want them to have to add to their debt because financial aid doesn't keep pace with increased costs?
The Assembly's budget would not only limit access to students by eliminating classes but some students would be priced out of higher education because of a lack of financial aid. This further separates who is able to afford a college degree and who is not and ignores Wisconsin's long-held commitment to making higher education available to all citizens.
I'll watch with interest as the conference committee works through this budget.
In the end, I hope our elected officials will propose a budget that resembles the one approved by the bipartisan Joint Committee on Finance and also consider the impact of their actions on the students of Wisconsin.
Richard Telfer is interim chancellor at UW-Whitewater. He can be reached at telferr@uww.edu.
