Here & Now

UW-Madison Chancellor Blank Addresses Impact of COVID-19

Frederica Freyberg:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that it has lost $100 million so far from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 16,000 employees will be required to take furlough days. There’s a partial hiring freeze, and budgets are being cut. That includes PBS Wisconsin, which is part of UW-Madison. The UW campus has been quiet since mid-March. In the wake of the COVID-19 fallout, students were urged to stay home after spring break. Right now, all classes are online and all summer programs are canceled. Chancellor Rebecca Blank joins us this week, and, Chancellor, thank you so much for being here.

Rebecca Blank:

It’s good to be here, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, what makes up that 100 million dollars that the UW-Madison has lost?

Rebecca Blank:

So, there’s a lot of different components to it. Virtually all of our revenue streams are declining right now. We did return all of the prorated fees back to our students who were in dorms, for their dormitory and food contracts. We’ve refunded parking fees to a number of our employees who are not currently on campus. We’ve had to pay some additional costs of converting everything to online, from buying software, and programming, and some special expertise, in order to do that as well as possible. And, you know, then we are facing some costs relating to the recent budget lapse that the governor announced. UW-Madison will lose almost $20 million in this year’s budget, i.e. the budget that ends on June 30th, out of that budget lapse. That’s a lot of money to lose at a time when other revenues are down, our gifts and grants are down, our athletic revenue is down, our union revenue is down. You know, it’s sort of across the board.

Frederica Freyberg:

It certainly sounds dire.

Rebecca Blank:

Well, you know, we went into this in a good financial position, right. We had some new money we were going to be spending next year, and we pulled those investments, which I’m still grieving about, but are going to put that money into this crisis. We have some reserves and we worked very hard to cut expenses. We have a hiring freeze on. We have a pay freeze on. You know, we were rejiggering some of our infrastructure and capital projects and then, as you know, we’ve announced furloughs, as well. So, you know, the short-term amount we will get through. The real question is what happens next fall and do we have a group of students and tuition and fees then.

Frederica Freyberg:

Right, I want ask you more about that in just a moment, but so, the furloughs make up about $30 million. Is there also money coming from the feds to help offset this?

Rebecca Blank:

So, we’re going to get just under $20 million from the federal government. Ten million of that is dedicated solely to student support, and we’ve already given, I think, close to $6 million out in emergency aid to students who needed it for whatever set of reasons. So, those dollars will disappear pretty quickly and not really offset these costs that I’m talking about, but they’re going to students, which is just where they should. Then, we get another $10 million that would offset, you know, $10 million out of this $100 million, which we can use reasonably flexibly. You know, that’s really nice to have. I don’t want to suggest $10 million is a small amount of money, but it still leaves us in a very big whole.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you expect that you will have to make further adjustments or cuts or layoffs or that kind of thing?

Rebecca Blank:

So, we’ve said very clearly that we have laid out a plan that runs to the end of October, and we do not anticipate having to do anything further between now and the end of October. That said, we don’t know what’s going to happen next fall. And it turns out that large numbers of students are not here that we’re back in a shelter at home’ situation, that we’re doing a lot of online learning. We’re trying very hard to prepare so we don’t have to do that. But it could happen. Then we’re going to be losing a lot of fall and probably winter/spring tuition dollars, as well, and that will put us in a much worse situation. And then, we will have to take further action later on next year, after the current plan expires.

Frederica Freyberg:

Even as we sit right now without necessarily knowing anything about a further extension of stay at home’ orders, what do you know about enrollments for, say, the freshman class or even for international students who pay higher tuition?

Rebecca Blank:

So, I’m very pleased with the fact that our– actually, enrollment and acceptance data looks reasonably normal right now. We’re right about on target with the number of students who said they’re coming. Our international students are down a little, which is that it actually less than I would have expected. The problem this year is that, you know, what’s happening in May is not terribly helpful. There are still, I think, a lot of people asking, Am I going to be on campus next fall?’ Do I want to be on campus next fall?’ and depending on what happens this summer, we could still lose a lot of those people who say, sometime in August, you know, “I’m just taking the year off. “I’m not coming. I’m going to do something different.” So, it’s very hard to predict right now what the fall is going to look like. We’re doing everything we can to plan a fall that has as many people on campus and as much online learning as possible. I hope we’re going to be able to accomplish that.

Frederica Freyberg:

I know that a lot of people are asking about things like UW Athletics, the football season, what kind of planning or preparation is going on around that?

Rebecca Blank:

So, you know, our athletic Department is working with the Big Ten Conference who are, in turn, working with the NCAA, and a lot of these decisions will be out of our individual hands here at the University. They will be made collectively by college athletics. You know, I would love to think that we’re able to do some competitions in the fall. I don’t know how likely it’s going to be that we’re going to have 80,000 people in Camp Randall, but I’m not sure 80,000 people are gonna wanna show up in Camp Randall. So, we’ll have to see. One option, of course, would be to try to play these games without fans. That still requires some 250 people, officials and the teams on the field, sharing locker rooms, and you do have to figure out the testing and the monitoring and all of the safety protocols to make sure that can happen.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow, a lot to deal with. Chancellor Rebecca Blank, thank you very much for joining us.

Rebecca Blank:

Thank you.