The University of Wisconsin-Madison has reclaimed its status among the top five institutions nationally for research spending – the highest ranking the state flagship has earned since 2014.
UW-Madison’s national research ranking has been a sore spot on campus for a decade after the university fell out of the top five for the first time in nearly 45 years. It dropped to No. 8 in 2018. UW-Madison officials at the time attributed the slide in rankings to state budget cuts and the loss of senior faculty members.
“We in Wisconsin can’t claim we’re in the top five on many things, but this is one where we’ve consistently been able to demonstrate to the world that UW-Madison is a premier research institution,” Mark Bugher, the retired director of University Research Park and former secretary of administration under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time of the ranking drop. “To lose that distinction is unacceptable, in my opinion.”