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To date, UW-Milwaukee has been a relatively quiet player in the debate over the future of the UW System. The three loudest voices have been the UW System itself, Gov. Scott Walker and UW-Madison, which the governor’s budget would reestablish as a public authority separate from the system. But Walker also appears to be considering peeling off UWM, and Interim Chancellor Michael Lovell has clearly joined the call to give UWM more autonomy.

uwm (photo by adrian palomo)

Amidst an occasionally contentious meeting of the UW Board of Regents last week, Lovell said, “The system we’re currently trying to operate under is broken,” explaining that universities in the UW System need greater authority to manage their funding, which the state currently appropriates to them in “silos” marked for specific purposes, such as utilities, health insurance or employee pay.

Lovell referenced an online learning program at UWM’s School of Information Sciences that, with greater spending from the university, could produce millions more in revenue for the school. Current restrictions sometimes prevent UWM and other UW campuses, he said, from strategically investing in such programs. All UW chancellors, he said, “know areas they can grow in, but we don’t always have the flexibility to take the money that’s coming to our campuses and invest it in those areas.”

Lovell’s arguments echo those made by the UW System and UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, who have pushed to give UW System colleges greater independence from state government in setting tuition and in managing revenue, building projects and procurement. Both the UW System and Martin have also called for giving the schools the authority over faculty compensation to attract high-caliber talent.

But they have differed over how to create a “new UW” that gives greater flexibility to its campuses. Martin supports Walker’s proposal to separate UW-Madison from the system, giving it, as a public authority, many of the abilities Martin has pushed for. Both say the flexibilities allow the school to compete with other large research universities around the country.

michael lovell

But for the other 13 campuses in the UW System, the budget adds no flexibilities. It includes only $250,000 to “develop a plan to convert the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to a public authority.” Martin said, however, that more system-wide flexibilities could be coming down the road. “There’s a realistic prospect in the governor’s budget … to ensure that each institution gets flexibility,” she said.

At last week’s Regents meeting, the board approved a plan created by the UW System that “avoids the creation of a new public authority” separating UW-Madison from the rest of the system. Instead, the plan would grant flexibilities to all campuses, including the authority to set tuition, although the schools would remain under the system’s supervision.

The plan is intended as a blueprint for a budget amendment to be sought as the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee debates Walker’s 2011-13 biennial budget.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the governor “remains open to providing individual campuses additional flexibility as long as there is a plan to increase the quality of education, save taxpayers money, and ensure the university remains accessible to Wisconsin residents.”

Under that budget, the UW System faces a $250 million cut. But the budget doesn’t provide most UW campuses “the options that are available to Madison to help us weather the storm,” said Michael Morgan, senior vice-president of the UW System. “There are going to have to be some hard choices unless we get flexibility.”

Some have questioned whether UWM or smaller universities in the UW System have the staff in place to handle functions, such as management of building projects, that would be transferred from the state Department of Administration if the universities are granted greater independence. “The presumption is they can handle the flexibilities,” Morgan said. “Most campuses are ready for most of the flexibilities that we’re talking about.”

There are also concerns that granting the universities greater authority to set their own tuition will lead to greater yearly increases. Regent John Drew of Milwaukee, a union representative, said, “All our talk about flexibility, it might be great for some campuses, but basically, what we’re looking at is the beginning of the end of affordable public higher education.”

UW President Kevin Reilly said, “Our goal would be not to have a situation where all or many of the institutions in the UW System would be saying to families and students from poorer families, ‘You can’t come here because you can’t afford it.’ That’s not an acceptable outcome.”

Lovell said UW schools need to diversify their revenue sources, a point Martin made as well. She said that if granted public authority status, the university, through private funding, would limit its reliance on tuition.

Still, for veteran public official Tom Loftus, a former Assembly speaker, the prospect of UW-Madison breaking away from the UW System is tough to swallow. “We are all the sorcerer’s apprentices sitting around here,” he said. “Something has been unleashed, and we have no say in it.”

UWM didn’t return a request for comment on Monday.

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