Karen Herzog

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Wisconsin think tank that riled faculty on University of Wisconsin System campuses several months ago with a report deriding tenure protections has issued another report likely to elicit a similar reaction.

A new policy paper released Thursday by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute suggests state funding to the UW System should be tied to campus metrics such as attrition and graduation rates, ratios of students to administrators and success of graduates to increase accountability.

The paper co-authored by a former UW-Oshkosh economics professor further advances a blueprint for a new UW school outside Madison or Milwaukee that it argues would better engage students, boost four-year graduation rates and improve the outcome for graduates.

Less than two-thirds of students graduate from any UW campus within six years of starting, based on tracking of freshmen who entered UW schools in 2006, the paper notes.

"The state's universities do many things right, but decades of inertia have left them some distance away from being schools that spend their resources on what's best for the students," the WPRI paper says. "By re-imagining an entirely new campus, we hope we can spur the schools in the UW System to borrow some of our ideas or at least think harder about how they can change to better serve their students and the businesses that too often find them lacking."

The new outstate model suggested by WPRI would maintain a liberal arts curriculum, but encourage those studying a subject in the humanities to seek a certificate in a STEM field. It would make summer school part of the regular calendar and refocus more spending on matters directly related to instruction rather than research or sports. That means cutting extracurricular activities and ditching competitive sports.

The re-imagined campus also would use more non-PhD-holding instructional staff and adjunct professors with practical experience in their disciplines. It would have a relatively small group of faculty with research expectations and lighter teaching loads, and the rest would teach more classes than faculty currently teach.

"Our hypothetical school would not jettison job protections for professors or give short shrift to the liberal arts, but it would make changes to how we award tenure and how we judge effective professors," the paper said.

Critics of the WPRI report pointed out that Reuters this week ranked the UW System No. 13 among the world's most innovative universities.

WPRI's report isn't about improving the UW System or imagining a new school; it's campaign fodder for cutting funding for the state's public university system, blogged Joe Kirgues, co-founder of the nationally ranked, concierge startup accelerator, gener8tor. "Something for politicians looking to rationalize decisions they've already decided to make."

A knowledge economy dictates more investment into state schools with a philosophy that builds on the advantages of a research university, Kirgues argued.

On the issue of attaching funding to metrics such as ratio of administrators to students, UW Colleges and Extension Chancellor Cathy Sandeen said it's important to consider that regulatory compliance demands have driven up the numbers of administrators who create reports.

WPRI is financially supported by the conservative Bradley Foundation. The report's co-authors are former UW-Oshkosh economics professor Ike Brannon and Philip Coyle. Brannon is president of the Washington, D.C., consulting firm Capital Policy Analytics, and Coyle is a research associate there.

"I think my contribution is to suggest that the way we've always done it doesn't have to be the way we keep doing it," Brannon told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "If we told students and their families we are reimagining a school that would do a better job of making sure they don't drop out and finish on time they would embrace it. There are lots of kids at every school who don't engage in athletics or extracurriculars. Let's help them get a degree first and foremost."

Brannon said creating a new entity, rather than changing an existing campus, would make the most sense.

"I'm not sure you could take an Eau Claire and make it look like what I describe without an alumni revolt," he said.

A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker said that Walker would propose in the next state budget "an increase in funding for the UW System and it will be tied to performance-based metrics. "

"The governor believes it’s important to know data such as total enrollment, graduation rates, time to graduation, how much students take out in loans, job placement after graduation," Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said in an email. "Overall, the governor would like to see higher education in Wisconsin become more relevant for students and employers who are looking for to fill jobs in high demand fields."

UW System Ray Cross said he welcomes discussion about the challenges facing higher education. The UW System's new strategic plan developed through discussions with Wisconsin business, community, and education leaders over the past year "addresses many of the specific concerns raised in this report and provides a blueprint for moving our system and state forward," he said.

"What matters most is making our universities more responsive to students increasingly interested in getting a worthwhile degree without incurring big debt," said Mike Nichols, president of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.