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Issued by: Brad Stratton
Phone: 414-229-4027
stratton@uwm.edu
Thursday, July 12, 2007
| Chancellor: Assembly's budget imperils UWM's plan for regional economic development
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would be severely impacted if the budget plan approved by the State Assembly were to become law, according to UWM Chancellor Carlos E. Santiago.
“The dramatic reductions in state funding for the UW System would have a crippling effect on UWM’s ability to serve our students and meet the needs of our business partners throughout Wisconsin,” said Santiago.
“The proposed drastic reductions in the student financial aid would have an especially serious impact on the UWM campus and the people we serve. This includes a troubling move to eliminate all state funding for veterans’ tuition. We serve the greatest number of military veterans in the UW System. These brave men and women served our country. They deserve a quality education, and their benefits should be supported by all Wisconsin citizens, not by placing additional burdens on fellow students, or by making additional cuts to the very academic programs in which they enroll.”
Although the Assembly budget does provide partial funding for UWM's portion of the UW System's Growth Agenda, the addition of new dollars to that one program would be more than wiped out by much larger reductions in the university's base budget.
“At a time when the state should be investing in our efforts to build a competitive advantage in engineering and the sciences, the Assembly budget would begin dismantling the infrastructure required to support our economic development initiative,” according to Santiago.
The budget approved by the Assembly also eliminated all funding for the Biomedical Technology Alliance (BTA), a collaborative program involving UWM, Marquette University, the Medical College of Wisconsin, UW-Parkside and the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and leaves unfunded the new School of Public Health planned for UWM.
“Business leaders throughout southeastern Wisconsin have told us they need UWM to produce more graduates to fill the new jobs they want to create,” Santiago said. “They also are relying upon us to do the research that will lead to new inventions and better products that will propel our economy forward.
“The cutbacks contained in the Assembly budget will make it impossible for us to meet our mission of fully serving the businesses and people of Wisconsin.
"The Assembly budget is not an anti-tax budget; it is an anti-economic-growth budget that will derail any prospects for this state to maintain its quality of life in the long term.”
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