UW is running campuses like corporations. Wisconsin colleges are suffering. | Opinion
We are now 14 years into the austerity program for the UW System launched by former Gov. Scott Walker. As the recent consultant audits have made clear, UW schools are groaning under the weight of being 42nd nationally in state spending per pupil, negatively impacting educational opportunities for our students. This should now be well known throughout Wisconsin. I wish to focus on another problematic aspect of this plan: poor administrative decision-making.
Marginalizing the UW was not just accomplished by starving schools of revenue. It was also done through management practices that would limit faculty voice by empowering each university’s chief executive, its chancellor. In prior years, UW schools were known for their robust shared governance: faculty, staff, students and administrators all contributed to decision making and formulating policy. Chancellors are now allowed to override shared governance under the guise of running schools more efficiently, like corporations. And we are all paying the price.
UW System has trouble recruiting for top college leadership talent
Several problems accompanied this shift in institutional power. First, the twin challenges of fiscal austerity and unilateral decision-making has made Wisconsin a second-tier destination for administrative talent. What kind of potential Chancellor or Dean wants to regularly disappoint students and employees with news of budget and program cuts? Our hiring pools for top-level talent should be robust, but have been perilously thinned as a result.
Second, when chancellors have unilateral power, it can lead to frustration and frayed morale. Good managers recognize that when they consult employees, they make better decisions and the satisfaction and productivity of employees rise. Unfortunately, not everyone is a good manager. The temptation to impose top-down decisions is great when one has the power to do so, and this ignores the ideas of those who know our students best.
Wisconsin health care is bleeding. Tony Evers' vetoes only worsen trauma. | Opinion
Third, when chancellors operate unilaterally, sometimes the only apparent means left for faculty to make their voice heard is in public. Feeling shut out of decision-making, the faculty and staff union at my institution have organized protests and a recent vote of no confidence in our Chancellor, Andrew Leavitt. These public acts make a point, but they also may make working together more difficult. What should be in-house, collaborative decisions are turned into fraught affairs.
Fourth, shared governance is a means of avoiding decision-making errors. Here’s an example from my home institution. Our chancellor decided to take 15% of the raise voted us by the state and distribute that money to employees who are underpaid by market standards. There are calculations to be done in accomplishing this, and our policies state that a faculty committee will check the work of the HR department. But our culture of unilateralism means that information was not shared. The committee would almost surely have caught the error that resulted in systematic miscalculations of raises for over 100 employees, but it was too late—letters with the new salary figures had already gone out.
UW-Oshkosh has dismissed more than 15% of its staff
The fallout of dismissing more than 15% of our staff at UW Oshkosh might have been greatly softened if we worked together. Understandably, our chancellor didn’t want to deliver bad news, so he simply didn’t share information about our financial situation until it was dire. If faculty had known, we could have mutually agreed to a less-damaging hiring freeze years ago. Better yet, we could have advocated for fully funding the university together.
Government without checks is problematic government—that’s as true for a state university as it is for the federal government. Simply put, we make better decisions when we work together. Historically, Wisconsin chose to build up its university system as a means of delivering a good quality education to its people at an affordable price. For decades this gave us a strong set of teachers and nurses and businesspeople and citizens. In the last 14 years, UW schools have been degraded by stealth, and the people of the state are worse off for it.
Nothing ever gets done. Cure for Congressional dysfunction is term limits. | Letters
Our vote of no confidence came with a request of the Board of Regents: ask respected community members and entrepreneurs about our Chancellor; consider the perspectives of alumni and donors; don’t dismiss the knowledge of UW Oshkosh employees. But just two hours after issuing this statement, Board officials tweeted that our Chancellor had their “full support.”
Reinvesting in the Universities of Wisconsin, as President Jay Rothman suggests, is a necessary step. But it’s not just about money. Reforming how our universities are managed will be an essential part of our rehabilitation, too. We need a new, more collaborative model of shared governance at our state universities, otherwise the problems outlined here will persist.
David Siemers is a Professor of Political Science at UW-Oshkosh and president of United Faculty and Staff of Oshkosh, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UW colleges are suffering from lack of funding and poor leadership