Wisconsin’s public colleges are falling behind as state funds lag and enrollment drops

Devi Shastri:

A new report on the financial health of Wisconsin’s state universities and technical colleges found lagging state investment, enrollment challenges and — for University of Wisconsin schools — an ongoing tuition freeze as some of several factors threatening their competitiveness.

The Wisconsin Policy Forum, a statewide nonpartisan, independent policy research organization, released the report Tuesday.

“When you look at state funding, when you look at the tuition freeze, when you look at the enrollment trends, each of those things individually … has been on a concerning trend in Wisconsin versus the rest of the country,” said Jason Stein, the policy forum’s research director.

“And then when you add the pandemic to that, I think there’s reason to be concerned and thoughtful about how to move forward and not take it for granted that we’re always going to have a world-class higher education system and flagship university,” he said.

The financial challenges faced by the universities and colleges have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors found, with the worst estimated losses coming from UW-Madison, where administrators predict a $320 million budget impact in 2020 and 2021 when considering costs and losses.

But the colleges’ woes began well before the pandemic hit.