One of the most important things I do as part of my job is talk with students. In theory, I mostly discuss academic issues. In reality, I often talk with students about all kinds of things, from career concerns to child care and the campus neighborhood. The variety is one of the things I enjoy, but it is very difficult to give students the time and support they really need.
Education is always a hot topic. In Wisconsin, K-12 education has been in the spotlight, mostly because of funding cuts and because public school teachers were among those affected by the change in collective bargaining. If that doesn’t sound familiar, you probably don’t have a working TV or computer (and then maybe you wouldn’t be reading this).
In any case, higher education has been largely overlooked in all of the commotion. Unfortunately, higher education has been damaged, too. State colleges have been losing state funding for years, so this past budget was just more of the same – a lot more to be sure, but the same. Eventually, an institution can’t recover. People can only do so much with so little and what little there is, is shrinking.
In my area (student affairs and services, broadly) open positions remain vacant under the current budget. Whether or not they will be filled is an unknown. The effects are far reaching. Employees are stretched and stressed across campus. The ability to provide the kinds of services we want to, and the kinds we should be able to, is beyond difficult. Senior faculty and staff retired in droves last year, and I imagine the retirement wave will continue if the budget outlook does not change. The loss of veteran employees creates a void that is difficult to fill.
This comes at a time when more people are coming to college and coming with very different backgrounds and needs. The “typical” student is very hard to define, so providing resources is more complicated. And, trying to be everything to everyone does not always work well. The needs of a traditional first-year student are different from the needs of an adult career-changer. Yet, the university includes both types of students, along with many others.
A failure to fund higher education will have consequences far beyond the campus. The immediate effects are easy to see – fewer faculty and staff to provide support, fewer course offerings, lower morale, higher tuition. Long-term, the consequences seem much worse. Quality will suffer, students will suffer, and the “brain drain” will continue because there won’t be anything here to keep the most qualified workers, anyway.
Beer and brats do not put Wisconsin on the right path.
