STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) — The UW System cuts proposed by Governor Scott Walker would impact UW Stevens Point the most. That’s according to UW Stevens Point Chancellor Bernie Patterson, who says the General Purpose Revenue, Segregated Revenue, and Program Revenue cuts would take a drastic cut. “We’re talking about just state funding now, and not an entire budget, not our entire budget, but just the state funding, we’re set to lose twenty-five percent of our state funding. Twenty-five percent.”
Not all university campuses are treated equally in the proposed budget cut. Patterson says schools like Stevens Point with segregated programs including the Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility in Bayfield and the Aquaponics Innovation partnership with Nelson and Pade in Montello could be at risk of losing partnerships or programs that are successful economic development and job creation initiatives. “At the low end of the universities with the twelve-percent reduction at Superior, and it goes up until you get down to the bottom of the page where Stevens Point is at twenty-five-point-one percent reduction.” Patterson says, “It would mean that, of course, the segregated programs would go away, the ones that are specially funded. That’s going to mean that we have fewer faculty positions, because we’re going to be eliminating some of those. We’re going to be having to curtail some of the services that we provide. It’s going to make us quite different.”
Patterson supports the proposed UW System autonomy, and is receptive to changes, but this change might be too much. “Being different is not necessarily bad, and rethinking how we do things is not necessarily bad, but it’s the magnitude of the problem that we’re talking about that makes this particularly difficult.”
If the state budget is approved with the proposed 300-million dollar UW System cuts, Patterson says drastic cuts will happen. “There will be some academic majors that will be eliminated, yes. Those that currently have students in them, we’ll work with those students to shift them over to an allied area that’s very close to what they’re perhaps majoring in now, so that they’re not disadvantaged in this. We’re going to do our very best to maintain the quality of education that we offer here at Stevens Point because we think it’s exceptional.”
Those cuts will also mean fewer staff and students at the campus.
Patterson has been talking to Legislators, and he’s finding they are concerned about the impact of the proposed cuts. “I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Madison and in the State Capitol, and they are more than willing to listen. They seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and while they haven’t been able to make any promises, I think they’re giving it very serious and very close consideration.”
In Madison, every Democrat opposes the Walker budget, and several Republicans are saying they cannot support cuts that go this deep. The budget is in the hands of the Joint Finance Committee, and university funding has not been finalized yet.
(Listen to our interview with Chancellor Bernie Patterson on our website, here.)
