Mnookin and other campus leaders had warned months ago that financial managers should prepare cuts of 5% and 10% to their base budgets, given the uncertainty of federal research and grant dollars. But stagnated progress on the state’s budget and the threat of cuts in state aid threatens to throw another wrench in university planning.
Republicans have floated cutting the Universities of Wisconsin’s budget by $87 million over the next two years. The budget committee has yet to take up the UW system’s budget, but Republicans have cited what they say is a lack of political diversity on campuses and alluded to the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses in the last two years.
It’s also looking more likely there won’t be a new budget when the fiscal year ends June 30, after Senate Republicans walked away from negotiations last week. With no new state budget, the state’s spending levels would remain the same as the current two-year budget, sparing the UW system, temporarily, from any cuts. But that also would keep current state aid flat, when leaders had asked for $856 million in new state investment.
