Liam Beran
Bascom Hall.
Application numbers to the state's flagship university remain strong this year, Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance David Murphy said.
UW-Madison may seek a tuition increase if the state Legislature does not fully fund its 2025-2027 budget request, a university finance official said at an April 3 university budget committee meeting.
The university’s current “official line,” Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance David Murphy said, is that “we are not increasing tuition next year.”
“The deal we made in submitting our budget to the governor was that, if you, the Legislature, fund this request, we won't increase tuition next year.”
But there’s an unofficial line, too. Murphy said “If, in time, we get the sense that they're not going to increase…they're not going to accept our very large budget ask, then that does open the door for us to do tuition increases.”
The UW Board of Regents sets tuition rates based on the state budget enacted by the governor and the Legislature.
The meeting largely focused around methods the university might use to absorb federal funding cuts. Murphy did not mention a tuition raise until one committee member brought up the prospect during a question-and-answer session.
Gov. Tony Evers’ 2025-2027 budget includes $856 million in funding for the UW System. At an April 2 Joint Finance Committee meeting, Republican legislators, who control both chambers of the Legislature, balked at the amount, according to WPR, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told WISN-TV’s UPFRONT show in December the request was equivalent to asking ”for the moon.”
Asked for comment, UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas says “tuition is set by the Board of Regents on behalf of the campus.”
“UW-Madison is not requesting a tuition increase at this time,” he adds.
Murphy added at the budget committee meeting that given a 10-year tuition freeze Republican legislators imposed on the UW System in 2013, the university views its in-state tuition cost — $11,205 annually — as “still quite a bargain.” The Princeton Review in 2024 ranked UW-Madison number 22 among the “best value” colleges in the United States.
“There's things that we could do there,” he said, adding that out-of-state tuition could, similarly, be increased.
Still, Murphy cautioned that “we do have to be mindful of the marketplace, particularly if we're entering into a recession.” And though applications “have been great this year,” Murphy suggested increased immigration enforcement could have a chilling effect on international applicants.
“Foreign students are getting picked up by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] these days and everything like that. So it’s maybe not a great time to decide to travel to the United States to go to college,” Murphy said. “How will that affect us, both in the graduate and the undergraduate side? What I've heard is, so far, we look strong with our international students, but these are pretty new headlines.”
Though Murphy said UW-Madison “definitely would look at [a tuition increase] and try to push it as much as we could,” he noted that there’s a “fairness issue.”
“This is being caused by cuts to federal research,” Murphy said. “Can we really put that all — you know, not all — but can we put a disproportionate amount on the backs of the students?”
For months it has been unclear whether UW-Madison would seek a tuition increase given the possible slowdown of federal funds. In February, the university’s provost said a cap on indirect research costs — which, if enacted, would cause a $65 million budget shortfall — could force students to pay more tuition, though a UW-Madison spokesperson later clarified that the university had no immediate plans for such a raise.
Later in February, UW-Madison College of Letters and Sciences Dean Eric Wilcots told The Daily Cardinal that the university did not at that time plan to raise tuition if the proposed cap went through.
UW-Madison officials have been relatively mum on how the school would confront any federal funding holes. At the budget meeting, Murphy offered several options, including furloughs, reduced capital spending, and, as a last resort, base budget cuts — likely in the form of layoffs.
“We’d try to avoid that as much as possible. The chancellor has made that clear to us, that we'd like to not have [layoffs],” Murphy said. “It will just depend on the action, how deep a hole we're given to dig out of.”
Other options, Murphy said, include:
- Block grants from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
- Early retirement incentives
- Potentially renegotiating leases, like those in the city of Madison
- Seeking discounts from vendors
- Using one-time departmental balances
- Implementation of shared services
Murphy said despite the threat of federal funding shortfalls, the university is only in a planning phase, and doesn’t imminently plan to institute cuts.
“We haven't seen any tangible federal actions that would compel us to do it at this time,” Murphy said.
The university’s potential cuts will depend on a number of factors, including the future state legislative makeup in 2026, Murphy said. UW-Madison has asked departments to slow down spending and hiring and create plans for 5% and 10% budget cuts in case they are needed. Murphy emphasized that “nothing has been decided” about potential options and that layoffs and student-facing cuts are the last resort.
But if UW-Madison were to see a situation “like what happened to Columbia [University],” which lost $400 million in federal grants and awards for alleged inaction on antisemitism, “or just a real slow trickle of [federal] awards” that affects its budget, “we would have to seek these or other options.”
