As I commented yesterday, Chancellor Biddy Martin is getting what she wants out of the governor's budget. The budget proposes making the University of Wisconsin-Madison a public authority, meaning it will have more independence from the state to set tuition rates and professor salaries, construct new buildings and do a wide variety of other things that are currently restricted by state regulations. In short, UW-Madison will no longer be treated as another state agency.
With the public authority status comes less money from the state. Although currently the state only accounts for 17 percent of UW-Madison's funding, the budget proposes cutting that amount by 13 percent, and even supporters of the public authority model acknowledge that it will probably mean less state aid in the future as well.
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