H 32°, L 7° | Tomorrow: 
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The start of the new year seems more like the start of a new era. The country not only elected a progressive Democrat to be our next president but also assertively rejected the legacy of Republican domination at the state level. Such developments were sorely needed at the University of Wisconsin, where years of neglect and broken promises have left the university bleeding away its resources, professors and reputation.
My initial hope for a reinvestment in this public university has since given way to outright disappointment. Near the end of the fall semester, Chancellor Biddy Martin hinted at her strategy for rebuilding the university’s funding and stature and appointed Michael Knetter, dean of the School of Business, to a position as “special assistant/liaison to the chancellor for long-term strategy and development.” According to Martin, “The financial model for public universities has undergone significant change over time. Like our peers, we rely increasingly on private sources of revenue and the proportion of our budget that comes from private sources will increase over time.” Martin suggests we should play this game of ever-increasing privatization strategically.
But given the enormous shift in statewide priorities after the election in November, why is the university administration pursuing the same old strategy of development and capitulating to the wishes of a dead Republican majority?
The privatization of public universities is one of the most disturbing trends in higher education since the 1980s and is interwoven with problems such as the rising cost of a college education for qualified in-state residents and more dynamic employment markets for professors — a trend that can undermine a good university as quickly as it can help it. Once proud public institutions such as the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia received 25, 18 and 8 percent of their funding, respectively, from their state governments in 2005. Not surprisingly, their tuition rates are sky high even for in-state residents, but even these hikes haven’t been enough to meet budgetary needs.
What we have are de facto private universities masquerading as public universities, and Wisconsin is no exception. Here, tuition has — of course — risen, but other perverse effects of privatization have occurred as well. Wisconsin garnered national attention for losing faculty members to other endowed private and quasi-private powerhouses. There is no escaping the need for more funding to keep Wisconsin at the top of higher education, but even with years of privatization (in practice) under its belt, Wisconsin is still struggling to compete with other schools in the market for professors.
These trends could be irreversible sociological developments. Or, as we saw in the recent collapse of our economy, they could simply be the result of years of Republican electoral success, tax cuts and a downright unhealthy obsession with markets and privatization. For my part, I’m going with the latter explanation. We know now privatization of important public sector operations was, in the words of Grover Norquist, a conservative strategy to shrink government until it can be “drowned in the bathtub.” Thankfully, conservatives no longer hold such influence in public office and public philosophy.
In short, when Martin announced her intentions to push headlong into more and more privatization here at UW, she more or less announced her agreement with those who would say that the modern university has changed in irreversible and uncontrollable ways: All we can do is play along in the marketplace and hope for the best.
I’m not so sure we should give up yet. The problems UW is facing are the product of human forces, and those forces have dissipated with a sea change in state and national politics. Public universities like UW represent an ideal — a stable venue of inquiry free from outside pressures and influences and the corrosive effects of competition for private funding. This is especially true in the case of this university and this state with its progressive history and reputation. If it is at all possible to save this social ideal, no matter how much work it might take, it is worth trying. Public universities ought to be just that: public. Unfortunately, Martin’s long-term approach appears to be far too resigned to fate than is appropriate given this time in history and the political window of opportunity that has opened.
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“Fuding sources must be kept public”
Hilarious headline for an article with “elected a progressive Democrat to be our next president” since Obama destroyed public funding of presidential elections.
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“Public universities like UW represent an ideal � a stable venue of inquiry free from outside pressures and influences and the corrosive effects of competition for private funding.”
So the ideal system, according to this view, is one where you don’t have to convince others to fund your cause but where you can take their money whether they like it or not.
To compete for private funding is to persuade others of your views. Is this what is considered “corrosive?”
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“So the ideal system, according to this view, is one where you don’t have to convince others to fund your cause but where you can take their money whether they like it or not.
To compete for private funding is to persuade others of your views. Is this what is considered ‘corrosive?’”
Yes, in two ways. First, although you’re right in identifying the need to promote participation in the marketplace of ideas, you underestimate the extent to which an entirely free market is subject to a number of pathologies not very different from the pathologies that economic markets suffer from. Surely you would not suggest that the people you are trying to persuade to fund you are always the most interesting, let alone intelligent, people in the world. People with money tend to get up in fads (see latest economic crisis), and so if that is what you want—a university that does nothing but support the latest fad or ideology—then I can see why you would want the university to constantly have to sell itself out to those who currently, but not necessarily rightly, hold the reigns of power. I, for one, would prefer a university resistant to group think. On the other hand, I also acknowledge the need for accountability, which is why I pragmatically said that we need to reverse the trend towards more and more privatization, not eradicate private funding entirely. That would be impossible and undesirable.
Second, it can be corrosive because it can spell failure for public universities who are not going to be able to compete with private universities like Harvard which have accumulated vast resources and wealth privately. Even if a university like UW decides to pursue a strategy of more and more private funding, there is no guarantee—we’d be essentially gambling with the future of the university. While this might be fine if this was a business, it is in fact a public service to those of us who rely on this university and others like it for our way up the social ladder. The point is essentially conservative: why gamble with the university’s future?
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We’re gambling with the future of the school by being TIED to the demands of the state. Private funding models at top universities empirically DO NOT fall under this “gambling” paradigm; it’s the opposite. State funding keeps getting cut and we need an alternative.
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I don’t see how those private universities aren’t gambling. Harvard just lost 8 billion dollars (22 percent of its endowment) this year in the bad economic climate. Most private schools aren’t so lucky to have had a huge endowment in the first place and many will be making far more radical changes than public universities to deal with budget crises(see Beloit College).
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7:03pm: “Surely you would not suggest that the people you are trying to persuade to fund you are always the most interesting, let alone intelligent, people in the world. People with money tend to get up in fads”
Whether I think people are interesting, intelligent or into fads is irrelevant. None of this gives me the right to relieve them of their money. They have a right to their own money and judgments. Just because they have money that I think could be used for something better doesn’t give me the right to take it from them.
“Second, it can be corrosive because it can spell failure for public universities who are not going to be able to compete with private universities like Harvard which have accumulated vast resources and wealth privately.”
Is it corrosive that my business fail because everyone is buying my competitor’s product? On the contrary, it’s a signal to me that I’d better produce something more valuable.
If a university can’t attract funding by persuasion then what makes them entitled to it?