In her presentation, Blank depicted a higher education landscape in which UW-Madison has fought to maintain its position, while other public universities have improved as their state funding grew.

“Our peers, our competitors, are investing in new programs, new research centers, new educational experiments and opportunities,” Blank said. “The result is, we’ve slipped in the past two years.”

UW-Madison faced an $86 million funding gap last year as a result of the state budget cuts, Blank said. Although the university made up about $36 million of that by increasing revenues, it still had to cut $50 million in spending, she said.

Most of the positions UW-Madison cut as a result were vacant, though Blank noted many campus offices eliminated hourly jobs for students that provide experience and an income for those workers.

Budget cuts have hurt students in other ways, Blank said, because schools and colleges were not able to hire badly needed advisers. Several departments in the College of Letters and Science have more than 500 students for each adviser, she said, which is well above the recommended ratio of 300 students per adviser.

And the university reduced its funding for building maintenance, which Blank warned carries its own costs.