{"id":12675,"date":"2024-09-12T20:12:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T20:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=12675"},"modified":"2024-09-12T20:58:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T20:58:54","slug":"rep-david-steffen-questions-number-of-administrators-at-uw-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=12675","title":{"rendered":"Rep. David Steffen Questions Number of Administrators at UW Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/rep-questions-number-of-administrators-at-uw-schools\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"uw-madison<\/p>\n

(The Center Square) \u2013 A state lawmaker wants a full accounting of how the University of Wisconsin System has thousands of more administrators now than it did 30 years ago, despite having fewer teachers.<\/p>\n

State Rep. David Steffen told The Center Square on Wednesday the UW system has hired 6,000 administrators over the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are the students and the taxpayers getting as a result of that investment?\u201d Steffen asked. \u201cThat becomes very difficult, especially when you dig deeper to realize that it really isn’t an increase in the faculty, the in-classroom personnel. These are all ancillary, secondary, non-essential type of additions to the head count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steffen pointed to a memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that showed in the 1992-93 school year, the UW had 26,360 full time employees. In the 2022-23 school year, the UW\u2019s headcount grew to 33,538.<\/p>\n

The additions are all out of the classroom. The LFB\u2019s memo shows the faculty headcount in 1992-93 was 7,181. That number fell to 5,729 in 2022-23.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are all of these ancillary and secondary staff positions providing a better product?\u201d Steffen asked.<\/p>\n

Staffen said he is pressing ahead with his questions because the University of Wisconsin is asking for nearly $1 billion more in the next state budget.<\/p>\n

Steffen said lawmakers and taxpayers need to know how the university is spending the $7.5 billion it currently has before lawmakers can give the school more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we have an entity that obviously has not applied the same amount of effort to providing better services at a lower cost with less people. They are the only entity in the world that appears to have taken that approach,\u201d Steffen said. \u201cAnd that’s unfortunate for the taxpayers, especially when you are looking to make an ask at the same time for $855 million dollars more in your upcoming budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

University leaders say they need the $855 million more to avoid a tax increase, and to keep the university competitive with other colleges and universities.<\/p>\n

Gov. Tony Evers is expected to include the university\u2019s request in his proposed budget.<\/p>\n

Steffen said he\u2019s shared the LFB information on the rise in administrative staffers with other lawmakers, including the legislature\u2019s committees on higher education, and the Legislative Study Committee that is looking into the UW\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the sort of issue that needs to receive a tremendous amount of attention. I’m glad that we have this now in September, so that for the next four or five months before the governor’s budget is presented, we can begin that communication with the university to make sure that it’s clear to them we need better justification for your existing funding in any new funding increases,\u201d Steffen added. \u201cNo longer can the response be \u2018Give us the money because we’re the UW system. Period.\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/rep-questions-number-of-administrators-at-uw-schools\/ (The Center Square) \u2013 A state lawmaker wants a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":10698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12675"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12677,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12675\/revisions\/12677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}