Walker's proposed UW cuts go too deep: Our View

Higher education costs a lot of money. The University of Wisconsin System, which serves 180,000 students and employs 39,000 people in Wisconsin, asks a lot. Its budget includes more than $1 billion in state money; tuitions have been rising, putting pressure on many middle-class families; the system leans on federal grants and private donations and other revenue sources. It's expensive.

It's also one of the most valuable investments we make as a state.

In direct economic terms, the more educated our workforce, the higher our state's overall standard of living will be. And in all sorts of intangible ways the university system improves our quality of life — injecting culture into communities, offering broad-based liberal education, helping define our sense of Badger identity.

Gov. Scott Walker's proposed Draconian cuts to the system will undermine those values and hobble future economic growth.

Story: UWSP state aid would fall to 1980s level in Walker plan

Story: $300M UW System budget cut proposed

Story: Lawmakers fret over impact of proposed UW cuts

The facts: Walker proposes to maintain the system's tuition freeze for two more years, to cut $300 million in the next state budget, while also giving the system greater autonomy to manage construction projects, procurement and other policies. Giving the UW System greater independence from state government is a reasonable bit of institutional reform. It's the sheer scale of the cuts that makes the proposal alarming.

At UW-Stevens Point, it would mean cuts of between $6 million and $7 million in the next two years — the largest reductions in the university's 120-year history, according to Chancellor Bernie Patterson. At UW Marathon County, which has already cut dozens of positions in recent years, the cuts could precipitate a crisis.

These two examples come from our own backyards, of course, but they point to an important fact: If history is any guide, it won't be the monolith of the UW-Madison that will bear the brunt of heavy-handed state cuts. It will be the regional campuses. It will be the colleges.

It is, in other words, exactly the part of the UW System that reaches those who need it most.

As Gannett Wisconsin Media has shown, salaries for professors outside of Madison are very low compared with peer states and even compared with Wisconsin's technical college system. These campuses have smaller staffs, fewer supports — less room to absorb yet more budget cuts.

Walker compounded the sense that cuts are driven by political animus when, on Wednesday, he told a conservative radio host that faculty and staff should simply increase their workload to make up the difference. It was a condescending, somewhat nasty thing to say, and it was not based in fact. UW-Madison professors, a February study showed, work on average 63 hours a week; we see no reason to assume profs on stretched-thin regional campuses work less.

The rising cost of college is a serious problem, and without a doubt some spending is not linked to instruction. In too many cases, colleges compete for enrollments by ramping up spending on multimillion-dollar rec centers or gourmet meal plans. And there is surely duplication and inefficiency within the bureaucracy, as in any large organization.

But higher education is a battleship, and turning it will take time and sustained effort. A 2014 proposal from the Obama administration to create a federal ratings system for colleges that reflects not only educational excellence but also cost-effectiveness is a promising step. So is the UW System's own "flexible option," which offers expanded opportunities to nontraditional students especially.

Taking a chainsaw to the UW budget now is no way to make smart, lasting reforms. Insulting UW faculty is no way to demonstrate an interest in positive reform.

And $300 million in new cuts is too much to swallow.