UW cut trimmed but tenure, shared goverance changes infuriate faculty

[TexasTowelie]

Lawmakers on the Legislature’s powerful budget committee trimmed Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million two-year funding cut to the University of Wisconsin System to $250 million, which if it stands would be tied for the largest cut in System history and would mark the fifth time in the last six budget cycles that the universities took a significant funding cut.

Of perhaps even more consequence, the committee approved significant changes to faculty tenure, removing it from state law, and to shared governance that would take away some decision-making power from faculty, students and staff and give more sway to campus chancellors and the UW System Board of Regents, who are appointed by the governor.

Sensing the gravity of the move, System President Ray Cross and Regents Vice President Regina Millner said the board would approve a measure to enshrine tenure in Regents policy at a meeting next week — as they’d promised when removing tenure from state law was first floated by Walker in his 2015-17 budget proposal in early February.

“We remain as committed to those principles now as we were five months ago,” Cross and Millner said in a statement.

Read more: http://m.host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/university/tenure-to-be-immediately-protected-by-regents-uw-officials-say/article_796817cd-c2e5-59b1-acfb-0595fcc8c3f9.html?mobile_touch=true

[F4lconF16]

1. They're doing the same sort of thing

At the other UW over in Seattle, too. It's corporate-run, all the way. They're busy systematically dismantling our entire upper education system and making a profit off of it. It's disgusting, it's backed by both parties, and despite the resistance of huge numbers of university students, staff, and workers, it keeps getting pushed through.

[Enthusiast]

2. The miscreants cheated Scott Walker into office—twice. They are doing this all over the nation.

[greymattermom]

3. Other states still have tenure

but it doesn't guarantee any salary. Jobs that were done by faculty are assigned to students, faculty effort is thereby reduced, and salary is also reduced. I know because that just happened to me.

[n2doc]

5. Sorry to hear that

Tenure isn't the iron-clad job security that the RW idiots claim it is. But now they seem hell-bent on removing what barriers they can to being able to fire anybody for any reason at any time. Except Administrators, of course.

[Scuba]

4. They're hell-bent on destroying public education in Wisconsin and across the country. We should ...

... be asking why they want an ignorant nation.

[n2doc]

6. We both know the answer to that one, Scuba

It is a shame that the voters have been brainwashed into allowing it to happen. They are the ones who lose big when the education system is converted into a for-profit scam papermill.

[Sancho]

7. Rick Scott is replacing BOT members with ones who get rid of tenure...

one FL university (FGCU) does not tenure professors.

At FGCU, a Jeb idea, it has not saved any money but been a challenge to maintain quality control.

UW will lose the best faculty first, and find it harder and harder to recruit. Of course the crazy repubs don't care. They simply want to privatize the entire education system, and hate the history and tradition of higher education. They also see it as the main location of progression thinking.

It's amazing that parents and students don't see the damage done by these fools.

[F4lconF16]

8. More on UW:

http://socialistworker.org/2015/05/27/holding-uws-feet-to-the-fire

[TexasTowelie]

9. Thanks for the info.

I had a job as a paper grader as a post-grad. It was only guaranteed 25 hours a semester at minimum wage. There were about 30 students in the class (algebra II) and the instructor told me to be much less stringent when I was grading because nearly all of the students were failing the class.

It was a thankless job and the instructor wondered why I wasn't pursuing a masters degree like she was. I doubt that she would have flourished in the business world because her notes to me were barely decipherable and full of misspellings.