Dive Brief:
- The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would lay off 32 tenured faculty members under a plan to close a general studies college created to support two-year degrees at satellite campuses.
- UWM Chancellor Mark Mone on Monday recommended to Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman that the board of regents nix the college.
- “UWM is faced with the reality of a program that has been severely under-enrolled relative to its staff and level of institutional subsidization,” Mone said when announcing the recommendation. He pointed to a 65% decline in students between 2010 to 2023 in the College of General Studies without a “corresponding reduction in staff.”
Dive Insight:
The College of General Studies was created to support two-year degrees at UWM’s Waukesha and Washington County campuses when they merged with UWM in 2018. However, the Washington County campus has closed and the other is slated to shut down by the end of the next academic year.
With those closures, “it is no longer necessary to maintain the college or most of its additional operations, which were designed to support and enhance instruction at the two campuses,” the proposal argued. The general studies college houses departments of arts and humanities, math and natural sciences, and social sciences and business.
Last week, the UWM’s faculty senate voted by a wide margin to oppose the plan, citing in part alternatives that weren’t considered, according to local media reports. They include having UWM bring the general studies faculty onto the main campus.
“While I have considered the concerns voiced at the Faculty Senate meeting and beyond, they do not overcome the rationale contained in the proposal,” Mone said. “UWM lacks the student demand for the liberal arts associate degree and cannot justify additional investment in it.”
Mone also noted that, after years of enrollment declines and budget cuts at UWM, the main campus “cannot simply absorb dozens of faculty positions.”
Mone also pointed to the expenses associated with educating students in the general studies college. The “unfortunate reality” is that costs there are about the same as in all other degree programs — up to the doctoral level — while its tuition is “much lower,” he said.
According to the chancellor’s proposal, state subsidies make up about 48% of what the College of General Studies takes in, compared with 27% for UWM’s main campus.
UWM’s overall enrollment shrunk to 22,676 students in fall 2022, down 9.3% from 2017, per federal data. Consistent with national trends, the proposal projects the number of high school graduates to decline in Wisconsin over the next decade.
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