The shady tactics shaping policy in the UW System

The UW Board of Regents is on the verge of voting whether to approve the most consequential educational change our campuses have seen in at least several decades. The UW System has proposed a narrowed, one-size-fits-all general education curriculum—explicitly based on the curriculum used at Wisconsin technical schools—that would be imposed on all campuses. 

The origins of this general education proposal are Act 15—the budget agreement signed over the summer by the legislature and Governor Evers. Yet the budget deal only states that “all credits for core general education courses…are transferable between institutions within the system and satisfy general education requirements at the receiving institution.” Significantly, a July 1 Governor’s press release echoed this language and affirmed that the budget agreement “…ensur[ed] that any general credit hours students earn are able to be transferred and accepted across all UW System campuses…”

But UW System President Jay Rothman decided to go rogue and use the simple mandate of Act 15 as a pretext to try to implement an entirely new, rigid general education program for all UW System campuses to further the Republican Party’s agenda at the expense of our students and the public. And this process unfolded with zero input from faculty across the UW System.

Creating a general education transferability policy is not complicated. Rather, it is accomplished through the creation of a straightforward policy mandate requiring all UW institutions to accept any general education credits taken at any other UW institution as general education credits. Period. This is precisely what AFT-Wisconsin, the union representing educators, including in higher education (I serve as Vice President of Higher Education), are advocating for the Board of Regents.

In recent years, transfers within UW System institutions have represented less than 2% of all the System’s total students. If the UW System actually talked to any of our faculty, they would know that students transferring from one UW campus to another are very easily accommodated.  We bend over backwards to offer credits taken at another one of our fellow UW schools.

But like pretty much all UW System policy these days, the UW’s general education proposal that the Board of Regents will vote on is built on a fundamentally bad-faith misrepresentation designed to bring about a very specific set of outcomes. If adopted as is, this proposed plan will move the UW System rapidly toward the model of higher education long sought by the Republican establishment—one in which the 11 comprehensive campuses are no longer comprehensive. Rather, students from around the state will have to attend UW–Madison or Milwaukee if they want to study most fields other than a handful of STEM subjects (which, in practice, is mainly about technology) and business.

And rather than being rooted in law or policy, the proposal up for a vote is based on an unwritten, unverifiable “political deal,” according to campus and UW System administrators.

Many faculty positions at our universities, particularly in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, are substantially tied to general education and university requirements that all students have to take, regardless of their major. We are trying to educate all our students, after all, in what is ostensibly still a democracy.

Therefore, if adopted as proposed, the general education plan will provide a powerful pretext to get rid of as many faculty positions and programs of study as possible. It adds emphasis on faculty in fields despised by those who believe education should be solely focused on training for a small set of jobs.  In this way, the general education proposal—like the now forgotten Deloitte reports—is another chapter in the UW’s austerity playbook, which is defined by permanent employee budget-cutting. And this is all happening while they’re simultaneously investing seemingly unlimited sums on unnecessary, often useless, technology products and services.

Moreover, the 11 comprehensive campuses have unique cultures and histories. They’ve each adopted campus requirements accordingly. Students and their parents know this going in, and our state has always appreciated the fact that, say, UW–River Falls is not identical to UW–Parkside, and so forth.

There won’t have to be a vote on getting rid of comprehensive education at the 11 campuses. Rather, it will be done mainly by attrition—not filling newly vacant and soon-to-be vacant faculty positions—and the immediate decision to not rehire untold numbers of part-time faculty who make our campuses work. The last thing the UW System wants is the word “layoffs” in press coverage, after all.  That’s a bad look, which might well make the national higher-ed press.

Over the last few years, the UW has spent many millions to justify elimination of faculty and staff positions and closing campuses and programs across the System. This entire process has been done under the auspices of our campuses’ purported “structural deficits.” Apparently, the Republican Party was unaware of these “deficits” as recently as 2021, according to its nearly 100-page treatise on the future of the UW System, which System leaders have been implementing ever since. 

Under the direction of UW HQ, local administrators are currently trying to ram through new general education plans at blinding rates of speed on each of our campuses before the Board of Regents even votes on this proposal. And because the UW System and campus administrators have lost the public debate about their proposed, extralegal general education curriculum, we are now being threatened with an audit to gain compliance in advance.

The word “audit” is powerful. It implies a government agency finding illegal activities and enforcing penalties. In common understanding of the word, depending on the findings, audits in the real world can lead to criminal charges as well.

Last year, on our campuses, we often heard about the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) audit of the UW. In fact, earlier this year, the Legislative Audit Bureau published an audit of state DEI initiatives as well as one specifically focusing on the UW System. Reading these materials has been eye-opening, to say the least.

First, the Legislative Audit Bureau, an independent agency, is overseen by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee. It, by statute, a truly bipartisan committee with the co-chairpersons of the Joint Committee on Finance as well as two majority- and minority-party senators and representatives.

Don’t tell the UW System, but the Legislative Audit Bureau, by statue, “may not examine issues related to academic freedom within the University of Wisconsin System; examine issues or comment upon the content of the various academic programs, including degree requirements, majors, curriculum or courses within the University of Wisconsin System…”

Finally (and here’s the kicker), the DEI audit—of both all state agencies as well as of the UW System—was done to assess state “compliance with Executive Order 59,” issued by Governor Evers in 2019.

The Legislative Audit Bureau’s audit of state agencies includes 22 specific recommendations that are basically a list of things that appear to have been created to satisfy both parties, but the overriding theme is making sure agencies are complying with Evers’ pro-DEI Executive Order. Many of the recommendations can be accurately characterized as pro-DEI, a fact that the UW also is apparently unaware of. The DEI audit of the UW System included no recommendations at all, presumably due to the statutory limitations cited above.

With cortisol rushing through their circulatory systems, UW System administrators appear to have issued directives to our campus administrators to purge DEI-related language, programming, and employees to comply with non-existent policy or legal mandates.  Presumably, failing to track DEI-related spending was the rationale for these actions, but the UW System had no legal or policy mandate to take these dramatic steps. Out of fear, they capitulated in advance rather than defended the role of educators, a move that earned the praise of legislative Republicans.

But, hang on: do policy makers care how many hundreds of millions we’re not tracking on technology and consulting expenditures in the UW System? Can we order a tech audit to show the taxpayers of the state how many of their tax dollars go to non-humans in the UW System? Or would that offend campaign contributors?

Now, to coerce faculty to approve a radical overhaul of the general education curriculum that will have significant, seemingly permanent impacts on every campus in the UW System, faculty are being threatened with a future audit of the General Education transferability policy.

Let’s adopt a simple general education transferability policy, and let the auditors see how our general education transferability policy is implemented at the campus level. That would be pretty dull work for the auditors, but they can have at it.

UW System spokesperson Mark Pitch recently affirmed that “consulting with shared governance on these issues has, and will continue to be, a critical part of the process.” And because of the actions of AFT-Wisconsin, currently seven UW System Faculty Senates (and counting) have voted overwhelmingly in opposition to the proposed general education plan.

This is also an inconvenient fact for the UW System, which always deflects when AFT-Wisconsin has advocated for union recognition. UW suggests that shared governance is the only acceptable outlet for faculty participation in policy making.

Well, either shared governance matters or it doesn’t, folks. The UW System can’t have it both ways.

We cannot remove ourselves from this historical moment. The U.S. is at a crossroads, and the Board of Regents has the opportunity to do the right thing. If this general education proposal goes through on the basis of an unwritten “political deal,” elected officials’ seeking to control what we can teach will never end and academic freedom will officially be on life support.

We are asking the Board to stand up for students’ right to learn and the faculty’s right to teach, both of which are intertwined with democracy itself.  We’re asking the Board to stand up for our campuses. To stand up for education and students’ rights to learn. To stand up for real academic freedom and for educators’ right to shape what students learn.

The Board of Regents must do what the law requires—adopt a simple, straightforward general education transferability rather than a one-size-fits-all general education plan that will, very intentionally, spell the beginning of the end of comprehensive education in the UW System.