Professors wary as Republican lawmakers look to slash UW budget

The Universities of Wisconsin faces an $87 million cut

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Another biennium, another UW budget battle.

It’s unclear whether Republicans will move forward with an $87 million cut to Universities of Wisconsin after, without explanation, delaying a vote on its 2025-27 budget originally scheduled for June 17. 

It’s also unclear whether the Legislature will be able to pass a state budget prior to the June 30 deadline. Negotiations are ongoing, though Republican senators have walked away from talks with Assembly Republicans and Gov. Tony Evers. At least two Republican senators, Sen. Steve Nass and Sen. Chris Kapenga, have expressed opposition to the current budget. 

Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback says in a statement that any cuts to the UW system would be a “nonstarter” for Evers. Higher education labor advocates worry reductions will lead to branch campus closings and staff layoffs. 

“It seems kind of inevitable that if there's any sort of cut, that there would be more closings of various campuses,” says Neil Kraus, a UW-River Falls political science professor and president of the university's chapter of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman and Evers had requested $856 million in funding over the next two years for the system, which is ranked 44th in the nation for state level funding. Republican leadership warned that number was not “realistic” and said any increase would likely be much smaller. 

At an April 17 meeting of the Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities, Republican lawmakers asked Rothman a number of questions about LaVar Charleston, who remained a UW-Madison professor after being removed as the campus’ top diversity, equity and inclusion administrator. An internal UW-Madison report released in March found that Charleston had inappropriately spent funds on trips and pay increases. 

Some Republicans have also cited pro-Palestine protests at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee in April 2024 as a reason to cut the budget. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters on June 18 that “too much political correctness” and a lack of differing political views have left Republicans unwilling to invest in a system they feel ignores their perspectives.

“It’s not about cutting money,” Vos said. “What it is about is getting some kind of reforms to the broken process that we currently have.”

Jon Shelton, a UW-Green Bay professor and president of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, says that the cuts will disproportionately harm the system’s smaller regional campuses. He says Republicans are actively hostile to the mission of public higher education in the state.

“The Republicans in the Legislature have essentially said that they believe faculty and staff in the UW system are not actually presenting the truth to students, which is, of course, not true,” says Shelton. “It's an ideological agenda. The fact that we've got a, what, $4 billion surplus right now, really speaks to the fact that there's no reason to do it other than ideology.”

The UW system is already facing a substantial fiscal challenge in the form of current and potential cuts to federal funding. UW-Madison requested June 23 that academic units cut their budgets by 5%, citing ongoing state and federal funding uncertainties. The system’s other top research university, UW-Milwaukee, had already requested an aggregate 4% cut across its academic units in April.

State-level resources for the system have stagnated in recent years — in the 2023-25 budget, Republicans cut $32 million from the system’s funding before later restoring it after the Board of Regents voted to restructure one-third of the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion positions, among other concessions. This led to layoffs across various campuses — UW-Oshkosh, at about 200 non-faculty layoffs, was the most prominent — and the shuttering of six branch campuses.

In the current biennium, Rothman has used the future of the remaining seven branch campuses as a bargaining chip. He told WMTV in December that he would not raise tuition for two years or close additional branch campuses if the system's budget request was fully funded. 

“Beyond that, I’m not going to speculate what we will have to do,” Rothman said.

The branch campuses are likely to be the most visible victim of any potential cut — their enrollments have long stagnated and system administrators in September 2023 internally encouraged downsizing any remaining campuses. 

Beyond branch campus closures, nonacademic staff layoffs, reduced student research opportunities and programming, and potential academic unit consolidations are other likely options for cuts. UW-Oshkosh restructured its colleges and schools in 2025. UW-Parkside merged its four colleges into one in June. The measures were estimated to annually save $1.5 million and $300,000 in administrative costs respectively. 

Though the UW system can lay off faculty, the measure is typically seen as a last resort and requires approval from the Board of Regents. The Board of Regents in August 2024 laid off 32 tenured UW-Milwaukee faculty, the UW system’s first use of a policy made possible after Republican Gov. Scott Walker removed tenure protections for public university professors from state law.

Funds are distributed across the 13 main UW campuses based on a formula dating back to 1971, when the state merged its two public university systems. The UW system does not publicly share the formula for how revenue is distributed to those campuses, or how cuts would be allocated. UW-Madison in the 2024-25 budget cycle received about 45% of $1.38 billion in state aid given to the system; UW-Milwaukee came in second, at 13%.

The lack of transparency surrounding how state funds are allocated to different UW campuses has been frequently criticized by Republicans. Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, said at the April 17 Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities meeting that campuses like UW-La Crosse, UW-Whitewater and UW-Green Bay have suffered under the distribution, and pushed for Rothman to make the formula public and commit to rebalancing the distribution. Nedweski did not respond to a request for comment.

Though he notes it is “rare for us to have an agreement with the Republican caucus,” Shelton agrees that the formula should be made public. But, he adds, “Republicans crying crocodile tears over the formula is frankly just bizarre, given how little they've actually cared about funding the UW system.” 

And though he would also like to see changes to the formula, he says that conversation needs to happen in good faith, not under the threat of funding cuts: “That's not the conversation that's happening.”

UW system spokesperson Mark Pitsch notes in an email that annual operating budget revenue allocations are approved by the Board of Regents in open meetings. But, Pitsch says, “the process is complex because our universities, and the costs and services they provide, are very different.”

“The allocation methodology is rooted in the original GPR distributions determined at the time of merger in the 1970s and modified over decades based on budget initiatives prescribed in the state's biennial budget,” says Pitsch. Reallocating revenue, he adds, would require potentially “pushing other UW universities over the edge financially.”

“Since state funding has lagged inflation for decades, the foundation for the previous year's allocation is the starting point,” says Pitsch. “This is not unique compared to a state agency.”

No matter what happens, Shelton argues there will be a human cost to the cuts.

“People have ended up doing more with less,” says Shelton. “It's going to continue to exacerbate the problems we have both recruiting but also retaining good faculty and staff.”