UWEC Chancellor Gets State Budget Surprise

Tom Giffey |

Newly minted UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt didn’t have much of a honeymoon before getting a rude introduction to Wisconsin politics. Schmidt, who most recently was vice president for university advancement at Winona State University in Minnesota, officially became chancellor July 1, just one day after Gov. Scott Walker signed the state’s two-year budget. As expected, the budget froze tuition at UW System institutions. (The freeze was the result of a political brouhaha earlier this year about the supposedly excessive size of the UW System’s cash reserves.) However, Walker also used a line-item veto to freeze differential tuition approved by the Regents before June 1, 2011. With the veto, Walker wiped out the last phase of the Blugold Commitment, a student-backed program that boosted tuition to pay for added faculty, faster graduation, and extra student programs. That immediately cut $3 million from UWEC’s budget over the next two years, a hole that Schmidt and Co. will have to fill. In addition, the state budget included a $250 million cut to the state’s capital budget, which will reduce the state’s ability to borrow to pay for new buildings. In a message on his blog, Schmidt said it’s unclear how this would impact two UWEC projects slated for the near future: a new $35 million upper campus dorm and a $12.4 million project to rebuild and redevelop Garfield Avenue. Blugolds, get ready to tighten your belts.