(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers will propose an $800 million increase in funding for the University of Wisconsin system in the upcoming budget, what his staff says is the largest biennial budget increase in the history of the system.
Evers asked the UW Board of Regents to present a budget request that includes that increase.
Evers did not say where the additional funding would come from or what areas of the budget he would propose to cut to account for the funding increase.
“Despite our best efforts, for more than a decade now we’ve watched a war be waged on public higher education in Wisconsin with devastating effects of which include campus closures, staff and faculty layoffs and program cuts and consolidation,” Evers said.
Evers is currently taking part in a school tour that includes UW-La Crosse, UW-Superior, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Green Bay, UW-Stevens Point, UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater.
Evers pointed to five UW branch campuses that have announced closures and several UW campuses have been forced to furlough and lay off employees, shift funding or make cuts and restructure portions of campus operations.
Overall, the UW system has 163,589 students on campus this fall, an increase of 1,000 students year over year.
UW Madison has 51,729 students this fall, an increase from 50,662 in 2023
“It’s time we address the challenges facing our UW System and make the investments necessary to right a decade worth of wrongs,” Evers said. “And if we want to build a strong workforce and economy prepared to meet the needs of the 21st Century, investing in higher education must be a top priority.”
The UW regents voted in December to accept a deal to repurpose a little more than 40 DEI administrators in exchange for $800 million for UW pay raises, a new engineering building on the Madison campus and millions more in other university needs after rejecting a similar deal in the preceding week.
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