Todd Richmond, AP

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Universities of Wisconsin regents agreed overwhelmingly on Aug. 22 to ask Gov. Tony Evers for an additional $855 million for the cash-strapped system in the 2025-27 state budget.

UW system President Jay Rothman has promised he won’t seek to raise tuition during the life of the two-year spending plan if the system gets the money.

Tuition and student fees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the system’s flagship campus, now total $11,606 a year for in-state undergraduates. The total cost to attend the university for a year is about $30,000 when factoring in room and board, educational supplies and other costs.

The UW system’s budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year stands at $7.95 billion. The additional $855 million would represent a 10.8% increase.

Regent Ashok Rai, chair of the regents’ business and finance committee, warned as he presented the budget request to the full board that inflation is preventing campuses from making investments. The system has cut expenses as much as possible and if the state won’t give the system the addtional money it will have to come from students and their parents, Rai said.

“This is a way forward for the state of Wisconsin,” Rai said of the additional money.

The system’s financial struggles have intensified as state aid plummeted from almost 42% of UW’s revenue in the 1984-85 academic year to 17.5% in 2023-24.

The drop in state aid coupled with declining enrollment has left campuses more dependent on tuition. Six of the system’s 13 four-year campuses face a deficit heading into the 2024-25 academic year and UW officials have announced plans to close six two-year branch campuses since 2023.

The $855 million in additional funding would cover an 8% across-the-board salary increase for faculty and staff. It would also help expand the Wisconsin Tuition Promise, a program that covers tuition and fees for low-income students.

The program covered students whose families earned $62,000 or less after its debut in 2023. Financial constraints put the program on hold in 2024 except at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. UW plans to restart it in the fall of 2025 for students whose families earn $55,000 or less, using mostly money from within system administration. A state funding increase would enable it to expand to families with incomes up to $71,000 beginning in 2026.

The new money also would keep two-year branch campuses open, Rothman has said.

The regents ultimately approved the request on a unanimous voice vote. But the ask is just the initial step in the grueling budget-making process.

Evers will consider the request as he crafts his 2025-27 state budget. He’ll give the spending plan early in 2025 to the Legislature’s finance committee, which will spend weeks revising it ahead of full legislative approval. The budget will then go back to the governor, who can use his partial veto powers to rework the document one last time before signing it into law.

Evers has already promised to give the university system more than $800 million. The governor’s spokesperson, Britt Cudaback, said Evers “looks forward to meeting or exceeding the budget request approved by the Board of Regents.”

Even if Evers includes the new money in his budget, it’s far from certain UW will get it.

If Republican legislators retain control of even one house in November’s elections, the odds are slim they’d give UW more than a fraction of the money. Republicans see the university system as a bastion of liberal thought.

The GOP cut a quarter of a billion dollars from UW’s budget in the 2015-17 state budget and imposed an eight-year tuition freeze that they didn’t lift until 2021. They withheld $32 million from the system in the current state budget, releasing it only after regents agreed to limit diversity and equity initiatives.

Aides to Sen. Howard Marklein and Rep. Mark Born, Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s finance committee, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the request.

Editor’s note: PBS Wisconsin is a service of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.