Some of the most startling observations from the articles are that most high school students don’t think they need a college degree, and that Americans have lost confidence in higher education at a staggering rate. We firmly believe that a college degree is still the single most impactful way to foster lasting change in someone’s life by creating economic prosperity and social mobility.
Great Care and Efforts Needed
The information above is not easy to read. It does provide opportunity, however. UWM plays a vital role in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, and throughout the world. We enable social mobility and drive the intellectual growth of people in the Milwaukee region and across Wisconsin. UWM’s diverse and talented college graduates power our workforce. Our research fuels the economy. Our partnerships improve the lives of our students, their families and our community.
To continue and to thrive in our vital work, UWM will benefit from self-review for improvement. To those who think we are fine on our current course – akin to “We’ve experienced budget challenges in the past, and it always ends up fine” – let me be clear: The time for action and change is now.
If we do not better demonstrate our value to students and our community, we will likely face further enrollment headwinds, leading to further cutbacks to budgets and personnel. Instead, we need to be and are committed to steering our future in a positive and sustainable direction, fulfilling our unique mission of access, research and engagement.
Student Success and Strategic Investment
UWM is making strategic investments to support areas of growth. We are continuing one-time support to our more impactful financial aid and student success initiatives, including launching the Milwaukee Tuition Promise for students arriving this fall. Also, for next fiscal year, in addition to dedicating one-time funding for student success initiatives, we established – for the first time – a strategic investment pool containing additional base funding to grow online programs, philanthropy and marketing to increase enrollment.
Finally, though we experienced a $1.9 million state base budget reduction in 2023-24, we anticipate final approval soon for UWM to receive new base funding of $2.5 million in state support. The legislature directed these funds toward initiatives to develop the workforce, leading to a UWs proposal to increase the number of graduates in engineering, computer science, data science, nursing, health care and business.
In this environment, student enrollment and retention of current students are critically important, both to meet UWM’s mission of student success and to strengthen our financial future. Every 1% in student enrollment and retention equates to approximately $2 million for UWM’s budget. If we do not meet our enrollment targets this fall, a mid-year budget cut may be necessary.
We must all work together to attract students to UWM and help them succeed.
What Can You Do to Help?
Ensuring student success and UWM’s success is not one person’s job. We all must own and implement these efforts.
This includes identifying new ways to do things, not only at department, college and unit levels, but also across institution-wide operations. For UWM to succeed, we need an “all-in” effort with our best minds working collaboratively and openly.
Here’s how you can help:
