STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) — The impact of the state’s 250 million dollar reduction to the University of Wisconsin System is being felt at every campus, and local officials are doing their best to inform the public what these deep cuts have led to.
At the UW Stevens Point campus, Chancellor Bernie Patterson says their share of the cuts in the past budget was six and a half million dollars. Patterson says that was after taking another cut in the previous budget. “Not only were we cut six and a half million dollars this biennium, but the previous biennium, we were also cut two-point-five million. Well now, we’re up to nine, and before you know it, you’re talking about serious money.” With that much funding cut from the UW Stevens Point budget, Patterson says they’ve had to make some tough choices that changed the campus and how it teaches. That’s because they now have fewer staff. “A good portion of this cut has been a reduction in our faculty and staff. Seventy-six positions, lost.”
Patterson says these weren’t just vacant positions, these were individuals that left by one means or another that are no longer serving students. “We’ve tried to move those responsibilities over to other faculty and staff who already had a full-time job, and some things just won’t get done. There are fewer sections being taught in the sciences, for example, and business school and accounting particularly. Their class sizes and some of the sections have been increased by about twenty-five percent.”
The Chancellor says there is another issue impacting UW Stevens Point on top of the 76 staff cuts. Patterson says it’s getting tougher to compete with institutions for qualified faculty. “Ninety-four point seven percent of our faculty are paid below the national average. That’s huge, because when we hire a physicist for example, you’re not putting the ad in the Stevens Point Journal. We’re advertising nationally, and we’re competing with other comprehensives. I’m not talking about the research institutions, but the other comprehensive universities like Stevens Point all over the country.”
Patterson says that pay issue has made it hard to both recruit and retain professors in the UW system. “I mean we’re talking about faculty who have won research awards here at the university, and have won teaching awards, who are extremely popular with the students, whose classes filled up first, and they’re saying, ‘We love it here.’ One said, ‘This is my dream job, but I cannot continue to make it work for my family here. I have to go somewhere where I can get a more competitive wage.’”
The University of Wisconsin System campuses have seen two state budget cycles in a row with major funding cuts, and there’s no indications the cuts are over. The Legislature will start preliminary work on the 2017-2018 budget later this summer. Patterson says they are continuing to have conversations with lawmakers, trying to avoid further cuts to the schools.
UWSP just instituted differential tuition, allowing students to pay extra each semester to cover the cost of bottleneck classes needed for graduation and student counseling services. He says there’s very little that can be made up by the tuition increase, and the cuts will lead to larger class sizes and more class scheduling problems.
Patterson and the UWSP staff just hosted a community forum about the budget cuts and their impact Monday night. They have put much of the information from their presentation on the campus website.
(Listen to our interview with Chancellor Bernie Patterson on our website, here.)
