Edit – please view this post at its new location
In his BH editorial today, Jason Smathers ends with a nice point about how there shouldn’t be a choice between making UW-Madison an elite academic school and keeping it accessible to the people of Wisconsin.
Although tuition caps would be a great relief to the student body, they could prevent an increase intended to maintain the world-class education students at UW-Madison receive. And if the value of that college degree plummets because of it, accessibility will be meaningless.
It shouldn’t be a choice; it should be a balance. Through lobbying and negotiations, we may be able to fine-tune that balance rather than succumb to one end of the spectrum.
But that depends on the Legislature. And that is a whole other column.
However, the column up until that point makes the argument that if we had to pick between the two we should strive for accessibility rather than academic quality. I feel that I am able to add a slightly different perspective to this discussion coming from a state where there is no big public school of even close to the quality that we have here in Madison. For many Wisconsinites, an elite state school might be the kind of thing where you never realize just how good it was until its already gone.
But when UW is treated in the most holistic sense as the state’s economic engine, the economic and social benefits to be had from a larger pool of college graduates is far greater. More grads mean higher median income, which means more tax revenue and a more secure economy for Wisconsin. So in this sense, the priority of the state should certainly be put on accessibility first.
This issue of quantity vs. quality when it comes to higher education needs to be viewed from a state-wide perspective. UW-Madison is one of 13 4-year schools that make up the UW System. As long as some of these schools are accessible to the entirety of the people of Wisconsin, there is no reason to sacrifice quality education here at UW-Madison. While having more people with a college degree is good for the economy as Smathers points out, if you want companies like Microsoft and Google to invest in Wisconsin then you need a school that has quality not just quantity. UW-Madison attracts people like David DeWitt to do research here. They in turn attract investment from companies like Microsoft. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen at mediocre schools, or least not with the frequency is does at very good ones.
[Edit] Its not just the computer companies either. Despite the pessimistic article, goals like this are the product of an elite research university.
At the time he signed the executive order, Doyle cited competition from states like California. The passage of the Proposition 71 ballot initiative made the state of California the world’s largest funder of stem cell research, and it has tried to cherry pick UW-Madison’s stem cell researchers, including Thomson.
Thomson, who now operates a research lab as an adjunct professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara in addition to his duties at UW, said earlier this year that Wisconsin must invest $50 million annually to keep pace with California’s stem cell investment.
Sacrificing funding to keep this university an elite academic institution risks losing these top notch professors and researchers that cause companies who hire very high skilled workers to come to Wisconsin. [/Edit]
That means more direct focus on increasing financial aid or, at the very least — and this may be the easiest solution — stop approving building projects that have seen systemwide segregated fees increase at faster rates than tuition. UW may drop a little in the rankings, but if students are continually priced out of higher education, this state will continue to fall by the wayside.
While I agree that stopping unnecessary building projects that increase seg fees would definitely be a good thing, allowing UW to slip in the rankings is what will cause the state to fall by the wayside, not pricing people out. Think there is a brain drain problem now? Just wait till the success of graduating high school classes are measured by how many kids go to out of state schools. There is a segment of the Wisconsin population that is looking to attend a academically elite school irrespective of the cost. If the UW System doesn’t meet that need then they will just leave the state. That’s exactly the reason I’m here, student loans and all, paying out of state tuition. The balance that Smathers talks about can be achieved through the UW System as a whole. If UW is going to slip in quality then it just becomes another one of the 13 UW System schools and fails to offer Wisconsin residents any kind of choice.
Besides, if your UW-Madison degree is really worth $250,000 to $800,000 as Wiley told Smathers and the cost of a year here $18,990, then isn’t the 80 grand worth of debt on of the best investments you could ever make?
Let the other schools provide the accessibility and the quantity. UW-Madison needs to be responsible for the quality.
Edit: I think we can agree that our disagreement should never have to happen
