Meh.
Wisconsin ranks 41st in the nation for total revenues going to higher education, according to a new report from the non-partisan Wisconsin Policy Forum. It shows the state ranks last in the Midwest.
The study shows that between 2000 and 2019, adjusted state and local tax appropriations per college student dropped from $10,333 to $6,846, which was 16.5 percent below last year’s national average of $8,196.
Between 2011 and 2019, the report shows state and local revenues dropped at the sixth-highest rate in the nation.
[…]
For the UW System, full-time enrollments have dropped by an average of 8.4 percent since a peak of 142,907 in 2010. Enrollments at the state’s two-year colleges fell by more than 47 percent between 2011 and 2019. Last year, two-year UW campuses in Baraboo, Barron County, Manitowoc, Marinette, Marshfield, Richland Center and Sheboygan each enrolled fewer than 300 students.
The report also noted enrollment at the state’s technical colleges has fallen by 22.5 percent since peaking in 2011.
The balance between funding sources is a policy decision. What has happened here is that the UW System has driven up spending despite declining enrollment. State and local lawmakers resisted maintaining the taxpayers’ commitment to the spending and the percentage share declined. For some numbers:
In the 2010-11 operating budget, the UW System spent $5.591 billion to educate 178,909 students. That’s $31,251 per student.
In the 2018-19 operating budget, the UW System spent $6.349 billion to educate 164,494 students. That’s $38,597 per student.
If you want to claim inflation… nope. $31,251 in 2010 inflation-adjusts to $35,988 in 2018. UW is still spending $2,609 more per student for no rational reason at all.
The problem here is just that the UW System spends far too much. They can increase the percentage of public support by just lowering their overall spending. But they won’t… because it’s not about the share of public support. It’s simply about the fact that they want even more money to waste.
UW has long been a cesspool of waste.
30% of the students do not deserve to be there just in terms of their (lack of) work ethic alone.
Owen and Kevin,
I agree that there is a lot of waste at universities. The interesting thing about it is that it is not just public universities that waste money, it is private universities as well. For whatever reason the cost to educate students at all universities has gone up for no good reason.
I remember working a part time job when I went to college and looking for free meals on campus. I was able to find free food 2-3 times per week. There also seems to be a lot of b.s. jobs at universities. A lot of these jobs are part of committees and administrative teams that do not teach and and actually reduce the effectiveness of staff by forcing bureaucracy on everyone. Tech companies also line up at universities and hock whatever new garbage software package that they are selling. A significant part of the so-called internet tech boom is basically private companies “bribing” public institutions to buy their product.
As much as the universities waste, it is a drop in the bucket compared to military spending. Although that mostly comes out of the Federal budget. However, many police forces are paying for “fake” training and military equipment.
Very true. I have 4 kids. One went to a UW school. One to a Wisconsin private university. One to a Wisconsin tech school. One to a public university in another state. And you are absolutely correct. It is a universal problem, but there is a reason…
When the federal government took over student lending, it became too easy for students to borrow money for a university education. With federal guarantees, lenders felt no compunction about giving a kid $100k for a degree in basket weaving because the lenders knew that the fed would pay the loan if the kid didn’t. With a fountain of cash flooding universities, they built to meet the demand of kids attending who would not have been able to attend 20 years ago. Or… kids that would have attended, but would have been more selective, frugal, and demanding of value. It’s easy for a kid to fart away 7 years on campus when someone else is paying the bill and universities are more than willing to take the money.
Follow the money. It almost always answers the question of “why” things happen.
I totally agree with Maxwell, with the exception of his last paragraph.
And Owen is right about the reasoning.
But now the liberals want to forgive those loans, which rates about 100 on the stupidity scale.
>A lot of these jobs are part of committees and administrative teams that do not teach and and actually reduce the effectiveness of staff by forcing bureaucracy on everyone.
Actually, that lines up perfectly with your statement from a day or two ago..
>Liberals are more likely to be employed by the government and feel threatened by decreased spending as this may lead to decreased wages.
So yeah, the common theme… “Liberals”.
Owen,
I disagree with the reasoning. Yes, there are a lot of kids going to college than before and yes of them lack the talent and/or drive, and yes liberals tout more schooling as the solution to everything, but there is something else going on.
A big part of the increased cost is the rise of the consulting class. When a large institution has a problem that they cannot solve, usually because they are political problems, they hire a consultant who proceeds to take money for not solving the problem. Let me give you a few examples.
School math scores are low, lets hire a math interventionist to teacher our teachers how to teach better.
The public is upset about policy brutality, lets hire a de-escalation specialist to train our policy force.
Our company is not generating enough profit, lets hire an efficiency expert to improve production.
Our institution is racist, lets hire a diversity specialist.
Max, my friend……….you’d have to be one HELL of an expensive consultant to have increased UW-system spend by ~$7K/year/student in the last 6+ years.
It’s the “free money” and the horrific expansion of the “staff” at colleges.
Maxwell is not far off in his comments about the consulting class. I’ve seen it in education.
But does it cause education costs to rise that much? I doubt it.
How about professors demanding students buy books that the professors or their buddies wrote? Or forcing students take remedial classes when it is not neccessary? Or taking so many classes not related to your degree.
Mar wonders: “But does it cause education costs to rise that much?”
Oh hell yeah. Ohio State has over 100 useless “diversity” employees costing more than $10million/year. Or about the equivalent of 880 in-state tuitions. At the top, The Chief Diversity Officer for Diversity, Outreach, and Inclusion in the College of Engineering rakes in $280,000 a year.
(And that is not a typo…. “Chief” is the actual job title. BWA HA HA!)
>Ohio State has over 100 useless “diversity” employees costing more than $10million/year
That example still not covering the 750 million dollar increase in the budget that Owen pointed it. That’s a tiny fraction of the increase if the Ohio numbers are similar in WI.
What is 10 million as a percentage of 6.349 billion? Is my math right at .001575%? Or roughly $1 out of every $635 spent. Sure that is money out of the budget, but I would have to disagree that it is hugely significant.
When I want to college 20+ years ago, it was the right decision. College was the place you went to learn more. But times have changed thanks to the internet, and now you can learn almost anything you want without a college class. There are less and less careers that require higher education now, because that knowledge is available in a lot of other places.
And I agree that it is the free flowing money coming from not just the gov’t but many loan institutions that drove up the cost of education. I think we need to reduce the cost of higher education and make it more available for anyone who wants it. In fact, I am a proponent of all state & trade school classes (not room and board) should be free for students who can maintain a certain grade point average. And they can be offered online. There is almost no reason anyone needs to go to a lecture room anymore.
And yes, college books are still a scam, and have been for 30+ years.
Jason sez: “That example still not covering the 750 million dollar increase in the budget that Owen pointed it. ”
Keep in mind that those 100+ salaried positions are non-faculty. They add nothing to education (not that faculty add much either…)
Indeed, Ohio State added 21 of theses positions and $3million+ in payroll in just the last two years. Now add in roughly 35% in bennies, the costs of physical facilities to house all these useless positions, and all the operational/promotional/enforcement costs. And I shan’t mention all the time actual faculty spend on this “subject”, making sure its embed it in their curricula and discussed in class.
Sure, it may not equal hundreds of millions. It is, however, one factor of how you _get_ to hundreds of millions.
Maybe next time we should also discuss the likewise useless positions hired/used to promote environmentalism, feminism, systemic racism, LGBTMISSISSIPPI, etc..
I disagree with jonnyv about the free tuition for state trade schools.
The people going to college are adults and they should be treated as such. They need to work to pay tuition, work to get a scholarship or get a student loan and pay it back.
The other reason for no free tuition, you will probably see more people getting basket weaving degrees and not having any consequences for that.
Putting aside that I disagree with that idea, the current extension of that idea would be to take that out of control Gov’t spending and accelerate it. If you agree that the problem is Gov’t spending how would putting even more money and power in the same people’s hands help?
I agree with Mar, College is for adults. Too many people are using it to extend childhood now, making it ‘free’ for everyone only increases that trend (how many ‘adults’ want to pay thousands to offer basket weaving as an accredited course, I wonder?). And how would we deal with actual adults going back to school?