Richard Hurd
Wisconsin Protests 02-26-2011 10457.jpg
Thousands protested Walker's Act 10 in February 2011.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants voters in November’s election to focus on tax breaks, record-low unemployment, and a revved-up economy.
But people would be wise to skip the short term indicators and take a hard look at Walker’s agenda for education in Wisconsin. The state’s education figures are signposts that we ignore at our children’s peril.
Since assuming office in January 2011, Walker has tested the fortitude of Wisconsin’s strong K-12 and higher education systems. This modest state of some 5.8 million people has nevertheless built one of the top research universities in the world—the University of Wisconsin-Madison— and a public education system with one of the highest graduation rates in the nation. Eighty-eight percent of Wisconsin high school students graduate, above the national average of eighty-four percent.
The state’s education figures are signposts that we ignore at our children’s peril.
Walker’s controversial Act 10 legislation—stripping teachers of collective bargaining rights—and ongoing historic budget cuts at all education levels take these strengths for granted. Under Walker, state funding for the University of Wisconsin system has dropped below where it was in 2006. State funding overall of Wisconsin’s public colleges and universities has fallen 23 percent since the Great Recession of 2008—a far steeper drop than the national average of sixteen percent, placing the state among the top twenty for cuts.
Walker’s cuts have damaged an education infrastructure built over generations of investment, which is necessary for the state to move forward.
Wisconsin is primarily a manufacturing and farming state; the number of residents with four year degrees falls below the national average. The state has the only governor without a college degree.
But economic and labor trends clearly indicate that most job growth nationally and in Wisconsin will require education beyond high school.
It's an issue that should be defining Wisconsin’s core growth strategy. Indeed, Wisconsin’s high school graduates at one time headed to college at rates higher than the national average; in 1992, that figure was sixty-one percent compared to the national average of fifty-four percent. Wisconsin first fell below the national rate in 2008 and the gap has only widened since.
The national college-going rate has climbed from 63 percent in 2006 to seventy percent of high school students in 2016. But under Walker, just fifty-five percent of Wisconsin high school graduates carry on to college, over eighteen percent of them leaving the state to do so.
Walker’s disinvestment in education has hit every sector: enrollment in the state’s technical colleges has declined by one-third since 2001; the campuses in the University of Wisconsin System have lost over 11,000 students since 2010. Two-year campuses have been hit especially hard with precipitous enrollment drops reaching 27 percent at one campus since last year.
The convenient political narrative in the wake of the dramatic declines Walker has caused is that campus and program consolidation is necessary and healthy amid student demographic declines and changing student needs.
But while convenient, this is not quite factual: Wisconsin’s overall population continues to grow, as does the traditional college-age group. For now. It’s a metropolitan-area growth, while rural Wisconsin’s shrinking school districts and shuttered workplaces reel from further economic loss due to declining tuition revenue and faculty staff reductions at their local campuses. Wisconsin will be competing with other states for students when statewide figures drop starting in 2025, as will the marketplace for college-educated workers. Yet Wisconsin is already facing dramatic enrollment declines.
Wisconsin students are hearing the message that education isn’t a priority in Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has seen a drop of almost a thousand students in their teacher education program since Act 10, and with it a loss of a third of their faculty. Disinvestment in education is quite literally a disinvestment in local communities when campus and school jobs disappear: Wisconsin’s two-year campuses are owned by their local municipalities. Public colleges and universities nationwide are struggling from years of declining state support. But Wisconsin lags far behind neighboring midwestern states of Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio in restoring that funding to pre-2008 levels.
Wisconsin students are hearing the message that education isn’t a priority in Wisconsin.
Walker’s neglect isn’t the inevitable Republican strategy. Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Haslam took office the same time as Scott Walker, in January 2011. Under Haslam, Tennessee adopted the first statewide free tuition program in the nation, with the ambitious goal of driving post-high school credentials among adults to fifty-five percent by 2025. (Wisconsin has about 34 percent of adults with a four-year degree.) The Tennessee Promise includes mentoring, community service, and a flat two-year guarantee of full tuition support at every public college and university, with several private colleges matching the offer. The tuition guarantee is offered to every graduating high school student, regardless of need—criticized by some but ensuring popular support in a red state.
Tennessee is now serving far more low-income students than is the UW system: forty-five percent of Tennessee Promise students are eligible for the Pell Grant, the federal grant for low-income students, compared to just twenty-nine percent in the UW system.
Early indicators are impressive. Enrollment was seventy-five percent higher than projected in 2015, the program’s first year. And 63 percent of Tennessee high school students now head to college compared to Wisconsin’s anemic 55 percent. Individual Wisconsin campuses offer a patchwork of tuition support for low-income students, privately funded and without the visibility of a statewide agenda. The Tennessee Promise simplifies the complicated financial aid maze that loses so many students.
Perhaps Governor Bill Haslam was liberated from campaign short-sightedness because of term limits in Tennessee. Haslam leaves office this year and with his departure rests a legacy to change Tennessee’s educational—and economic—trajectory.
Scott Walker, now vying for this third term as Governor, has sent a message to Wisconsinites that the state is “open for business.” But in the future, how many Wisconsin residents will be prepared to help operate or even run that business?