With the decline of state funding, Blank, the former dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Business at the University of Michigan, said at a student forum Thursday afternoon in the Red Gym the chancellor has to spend a “majority” of their time raising funds from private donors.
I have other reasons for supporting her, but the above sounds pretty good.
I use this blog to talk about my thoughts on state funding for our public university quite frequently. And I’ve found, especially amongst my more liberal friends, this is a concept that seems almost foreign in a sense, as if they had not considered it an option when looking at issues like domestic partnership benefits. As I drive home, over and over again, other public schools like UVA and Michigan have blazed a path Madison will eventually need to travel down if we want to continue growing as a university. Perhaps it would end the entropy occurring in our US News rankings.
Less state funding does not mean we’d become a Marquette, it just gives UW-Madison a more efficient way to conduct its business. We’d still have ties to the state legislature, just as Michigan has, and continue to serve the state as outlined in the Wisconsin Idea.
7 Comments
May 16, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Good points about fundraising, but US News… It’s unfortunate how much of an effect a 2nd rate magazine has on a university’s behavior (admissions standards, spending, even curriculum).
May 16, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Jack, I totally agree with you — I’ve addressed that quite a bit in past posts. Sadly, it’s a huge component in the decision-making calculus of thousands of prospective students UW-Madison has looking at the school each year (this is well documented, but I also know as someone who works closely with admissions here in my job). Until things change, we better play in the system we’ve got — our peers (Michigan, Illinois, UCLA) aren’t going to stop anytime soon…
I’d also add our school has been hurt in many other rankings and in other, less quantifiable ways, such as losing top professors to schools who can offer *more* (money, grants, travel stipends, etc) and priviate funds are simply the only way we can compete anymore.
May 17, 2008 at 11:51 am
From what I know about the candidates, she’s definitely my first choice for these reasons as well.
May 17, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Shes by far the most qualified from an experience stand point. I will be very disappointed if she is not selected, even more so if sandefer is selected
May 17, 2008 at 3:08 pm
There’s no way that Sandefur will be selected. I don’t care what the line given by the Search and Screen committee is, he’s the token internal candidate. If that smaller Regents committee of four has any sense, they’ll push him aside from the get-go and focus on the other three.
May 18, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Blank is outstanding. I was extremely lucky to have been able to attend a lunch with her on Thursday, and she is my top pick (although, I didn’t do this with the other candidates so it’s not an entirely fair assessment). She fielded questions from the group of 10-12 (mostly faculty and staff… there were two graduate students and myself) and did amazingly well. Her background as an economist is impressive and enables her to fully understand the reality of the funding situation. She spent a lot of time emphasizing the need for private donations, but also discussed the need to work better with the state legislature in order to prevent state funding from decreasing at an unmanageable rate.
Because of the number of faculty and staff present, she spent a significant amount of time discussing collective bargaining issues, but her answers demonstrated a pragmatic approach to problem solving. As an outside candidate, she still has a lot to learn about UW-Madison because some of her responses were somewhat vague… she was asked a question about diversity and spoke to the necessity of a variety of student groups and good communication… but her outside perspective would prove to be useful (see her comment at the end of the BH article.. I completely agree).
May 19, 2008 at 2:54 am
Post dammit!