Shrinking UW capacity threatens Wisconsin's future

By Judy Berthiaume

EAU CLAIRE—When the dean of one of the freshman-sophomore UW Colleges proposed partnering with UW-Eau Claire to develop a program to graduate more nurses, Chancellor Donald Mash agreed that it would be an excellent way to help address the critical nursing shortage in Wisconsin.

“It’s exactly the kind of thing that an interactive regional public university should do for its region and state,” Mash said of the proposal from UW-Marathon County in Wausau. “Central Wisconsin needs more nurses, there is a demand by students in the region for opportunities to earn four-year nursing degrees without moving from the area, and UW-Eau Claire’s School of Nursing—which has a long history of meeting health care needs in the Chippewa Valley—is at capacity and turns many nursing applicants away.”

"We’ve had to let some things go and we may have to consider eliminating additional things if our financial capacity continues to shrink." —UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Donald Mash

Unfortunately, the UW-Eau Claire–UW-Marathon County nursing initiative may not get beyond the talking stage because dramatic cuts to the university’s budget in recent years has made it difficult for UW-Eau Claire to reach out and pursue programs other than those already in place, Mash said.

“It’s a shame because a public university should have the margin and flexibility to move forward with initiatives that will so clearly benefit the region and the state,” Mash said. “It’s a shame that we can’t utilize our full potential to help Wisconsin because of our diminished financial capacity. We’ll look closely at this nursing initiative to see if there is any way to do it but I’m not optimistic. If we can’t, it’ll be too bad for Wisconsin.”

In the face of multi-million dollar cuts to its budget and careful management of shrinking resources, UW-Eau Claire is struggling to provide current students with an excellent education, Mash said. Maintaining that quality has come at a price—and that price is a limit on the university’s ability to interact with the region and state in ways that can make a difference to the social, civic and economic well being of the residents of Wisconsin, he said.

“We’ve maintained our educational quality by limiting our enrollment growth and focusing on our core functions,” Mash said of managing the budget crisis. “We’re still doing a great job of teaching our students and providing an extraordinary array of co-curricular programs. But we’ve had to let some things go and we may have to consider eliminating additional things if our financial capacity continues to shrink.

“And, sadly, many of these are the things that could make a real difference for the people of Wisconsin. And as a result the decline of state funding is compromising our public university system’s ability to produce the critical economic, social and civic capital Wisconsin requires.”

Mash said a few examples of lost or diminished opportunities at UW-Eau Claire include:

• Enrolling additional employed adults who could and would study for a degree part-time. With Wisconsin’s struggling economy, more education and degrees would benefit the state. But UW-Eau Claire is limited in its ability to offer additional courses at convenient times that would be most beneficial to this potentially growing population of part-time students. “There are many things we could be doing but aren’t able to do because our limited financial capacity forces us to focus upon our core mission of serving traditional-age, full-time students,” Mash said, noting that these underserved non-traditional students would remain in Wisconsin after they graduate and contribute to a state "brain gain." “It’s too bad for Wisconsin that we can’t increase the number of our citizens with college degrees.”
  
  
• Enhancing our region’s quality of life. UW-Eau Claire is one of only a few public universities in the nation with a service-learning graduation requirement. Its students annually contribute more than 67,000 community service hours, a majority of them in western Wisconsin. “The impact on the quality of life in this region is tremendous,” Mash said of the work students do for service organizations. “Service-learning is an example of the kind of program we may have to decide whether we can afford if our financial capacity continues to shrink. If we must shrink further and discontinue this program, it will be too bad for the Chippewa Valley.”
  
  
• Providing Wisconsin’s Technology Valley with human capital. The Chippewa Valley Initiative was initially approved and then gutted as a result of budget cuts. The initiative, part of an Economic Stimulus Package proposed by the UW System, was to provide the region’s growing and promising high-tech sector with more graduates in fields like computer science and management information systems, thus stimulating economic growth and increasing the number of high-paying technology jobs. A skilled labor pool is necessary to attract new high-tech businesses to the area and to help existing companies expand, Mash said. “The state’s leaders acknowledge the critical role the UW System must play in the governor’s ‘Grow Wisconsin’ economic plan, yet we’ve compromised the UW System’s capacity to help meet these goals,” he said. “This is too bad for Wisconsin’s economy.”

“These programs and activities are very different but they all represent the kinds of initiatives UW-Eau Claire should be involved with if we are to maximize the role and mission of an effective interactive public university,” Mash said. “These are some examples of things that we – as a region and a state – are losing as a result of shrinking financial capacity resulting from a declining state investment in the UW System.”

In time citizens throughout the region and state will personally feel the impact of the substantial budget cuts to the UW System because the university’s reach and impact extends well beyond its enrolled students and the borders of the campus, Mash said.

“We’re striving to be very good at what we do using limited resources,” Mash said. “We’re educating students and addressing core functions as we limit enrollment growth and shrink our programs to maintain quality in the face of diminished financial capacity.

“If we continue down this road, which has been the trend line for over a decade, UW-Eau Claire (and the UW System) will be a shadow of its former self, and that will be too bad for the Chippewa Valley and Wisconsin.”

“As we look to the future, to meet our state’s economic, social and civic challenges, the University of Wisconsin System should be empowered as a vehicle to drive us toward a bright future,” Mash said.

“But this will require an investment by our state’s leaders to increase our financial capacity with modest but reliable funding. A deliberate UW System-state partnership would be a significant competitive advantage in the quest for the state’s bright future.”

Judy Berthiaume is director of the news bureau at UW-Eau Claire.