Here & Now

Steve Wildeck on UW Shutting Down Branch College Campuses

Frederica Freyberg:

In education news, UW-Platteville announced this week it is cutting 111 positions to make up a more than $9 million deficit, and the Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman has already announced the closure of in-person instruction at the Fond du Lac and West Bend two-year campuses and the definitive closing of UW-Richland. We sat down this week with Steve Wildeck, vice chancellor emeritus of UW-Colleges and UW-Extension who is critical of this move. We should note, PBS Wisconsin is part of UW-Madison. We started by asking his reaction.

Steve Wildeck:

I think what my reaction was not total surprise. My concern was at those campuses was that they were convenient casualties of enrollment challenges at the four-year institutions. When the UW-Colleges and UW-Extension were dissolved by the UW System leadership in 2018, that began a very precipitous drop in enrollments at the two-year campuses starting in 2019 that brought us to the current day. And if you look at, again, those campuses that were attached at that time, to UW-Milwaukee, Oshkosh and Platteville, the connection is very, very clear that that did not help those campuses.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how should the UW respond to falling enrollment and, with it, budgets that are in the red, not just on two-year campuses, but across the system?

Steve Wildeck:

Well, this didn’t happen overnight. I would contend that enrollment is not the problem. Enrollment is the symptom that evolved from the problem of not adequately managing as a UW System the supply and demand across its universities, and that’s called enrollment management, and we have not had a systemwide enrollment management strategy literally since 2004, 2005.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you think, though, that the state of Wisconsin and its public UW institutions, are there too many of them given the demographics?

Steve Wildeck:

Before we begin shutting doors forever and backing out of agreements with communities who put up real money to build and maintain these campuses, we have to step back and put a moratorium on any more door closures and have this conversation about where we’re going with this in higher education in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

In fact, you said that what you’re seeing is the disintegration of the system and you are concerned that it will get worse. How so?

Steve Wildeck:

I think that the two-year campuses have — are in a very vulnerable spot. They have been attached to four-year campuses who will continue to see enrollment pressures and I think that the commitment and the promise that the UW System and the Board of Regents made to those communities back in the 1960s in exchange, they got these campuses all on the local property tax dollar, I’m afraid that commitment and that partnership has been put off to the side and out of the conversation. We have to put that right back in the middle of the conversation because that’s how these communities came to be.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is the best path forward?

Steve Wildeck:

I have not seen a willingness to have a broad public strategic conversation about where we’re going with higher education in Wisconsin. I am calling on the legislature to throw that yellow flag on the field, to use a football metaphor, to say time out. We’re doing things that are permanent. We’re doing things that will have lifelong negative consequences on communities for which we have a high level of obligation and we’re closing doors to higher education at a time when this state needs a higher level of degree holders. It needs better-paying jobs. We are becoming much less attractive to high school graduates in the UW System than we were even seven years ago. We have to open that can of worms to really take a close look at what we’re doing and how we want to move forward as a state. And whether or not the existing structures of the UW System and the technical colleges, which, again, are very different from those in other states, are serving our citizens and our residents in Wisconsin the very best that they can.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Steve Wildeck, thanks very much.

Steve Wildeck:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to the closures, Universities of Wisconsin President, Jay Rothman, said in a statement, “It’s time for us to realign our branch campuses to current market realities and prepare for the future. The status quo,” he said, “is not sustainable.”