Inaugurated in 1904, University of Wisconsin (UW) President
Charles Van Hise gradually changed the role of the school from pure
academics to service to the state. Van Hise thought UW research
should improve the lives of all Wisconsin citizens through research
into better ways, for example, to farm, catch fish, and manage
forests. Academics could also improve Wisconsin law and government.
It came to be called the Wisconsin Idea.
It made perfect sense. The UW and the state capitol are only a
mile apart at opposite ends of State Street in Madison.
Cross-fertilization of state government and the UW seemed natural,
especially when the economics department and state government were
dominated by progressives such as professor John R. Commons and
Governor Robert M. LaFollette. Van Hise and LaFollette were the
first Wisconsin natives to hold their respective positions.
In the 1911 legislative session, Wisconsin adopted things we now
take for granted: worker compensation, a state highway department,
child labor laws, and an income tax. University research included
three innovations that literally changed the face of farming in
Wisconsin: dairying, raising better alfalfa, and the superiority of
cylindrical silos.
In the years since the golden age of the Wisconsin Idea,
UW/state relations have had their ups and downs. Right now, they
are way down.
Three UW professors were convicted of lurid sex felonies in
2005. One used administrative leave to draw pay while in prison,
convicted for a term of eight to ten years on three counts of
sexual assault. It took UW nearly a year to fire the three. Another
administrator was charged with sexual harassment. Almost crowded
off the front page by crime stories, the UW Regents raised the
minimum pay for chancellor at UW to $307,000; current UW chancellor
John Wiley makes more because he has been chancellor since 2001.
With the raise, he makes about the average salary for university
presidents at major public schools. That is in addition to the
several hundred dollars Wiley gets monthly for a car allowance. The
timing and symbolism were terrible.
It wasn’t just crime or money that upset UW critics. Before
spring break last year, the student health service reminded
students they could stock up on morning-after pills. University
researchers are using embryonic stem cells and even the term
“embryonic stem cell research” makes many pro-lifers squirm.
Although the Wisconsin legislature is dominated by Republicans,
it was a Democrat who called UW educrats “white-wine sipping
quiche-eaters.” Many state legislators have taken a dim view of
what they perceive as a university spinning out of control. Last
year, they engineered a cut in UW funding. Wisconsin has an
unusually creative line-item veto, which allowed Democratic
Governor Jim Doyle to restore almost all funding. The Assembly
narrowly passed a bill banning university health services from
dispensing the morning-after pill. The state senate didn’t act on
it so it never passed.
An irate Chancellor Wiley nevertheless blasted Assembly
Republicans, exacerbating tensions. Republican legislators, Wiley
said, don’t fully comprehend that it is UW that is the engine of
growth in Wisconsin, not the citizens who pay taxes. Wiley and
other UW faculty dismissed critics of the student health service
and embryonic stem cell research as Neanderthals. Despite the
liberal politics of former UW chancellor Donna Shalala, legislative
relations never sunk this low during her tenure.
Because many Republican legislators attended colleges such as
UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse and UW-Oshkosh, Madison does not have a
compelling hold on them. Those colleges are less expensive, have
classes on schedules that allow working people to attend, are not
hostile to conservative viewpoints, and provide services to small
businesses and farmers in their districts.
The average family income in Wisconsin is $47,220. Increasingly,
Wisconsin citizens can’t afford to send their qualified high school
seniors to UW, where tuition has increased 66 percent since 2000.
Many families are enrolling their children in the UW system schools
in almost every larger city in the state. Because Wisconsin and
Minnesota have tuition reciprocity, Wisconsin students can go to
Minnesota state schools for the same price, too.
A former UW official told an audience there are three issues in
higher education today: parking for the faculty, football for the
alumni and sex for the students. Meanwhile, the new UW master plan
calls for the building named for Van Hise to be torn down.
Is this all that’s left of the Wisconsin Idea?
