“Wisconsin is an excellent school, and they’re facing the same problems as we are,” Malcolm said. “We have learned if you want to provide financial aid for students, if you want to do research, you’ve got to raise money. Philanthropy and private support are only going to get more important.”
UW Director of Financial Aid Susan Fischer said it is difficult to compare the University of Michigan to UW because of differing politics and laws.
“Michigan has a lot more money to give to students based on financial need. We are not looking at apples to apples. But, we are all interested in the same thing, which is to get as many students out of school with degrees as possible.”
Wisconsin and Michigan are two of the closest peer institutions in the country across their student body composition, research focus, public status [edit, according to one commenter, Michigan is not a land grant institution], strength in the fields (medicine, business, engineering, politics, etc.) — everything about them screams “PEER INSTITUTIONS”. Michigan and Wisconsin get relatively similar amounts of state funding and have similar regulations. As for politics, I don’t understand the point: even with Wisconsin’s state legislature problems, it’s not as if Michigan gets better treatment. The argument posited by Wisconsin seems like a bad excuse rather than a valid justification for weaker funding goals.
To me, it’s extremely troubling to see Wisconsin staff trying to downplay the connection because UW-Madison can’t compete with Ann Arbor. If the goal of the university is being Ohio State and Minnesota’s big brother, then Wisconsin will forever be left out of the list of truly prestigious schools. It’s imperative for UW-Madison to keep up with other top peers in order to remain a competitive and top-ranked university. Privatization efforts, like Michigan’s, are key.
But as the Herald reported today:
The University of Michigan recently announced a record-breaking fundraising effort, garnering $3.115 billion dollars since 2000 to increase scholarships, professorships and building projects.
According to Judith Malcolm, senior director of executive communications in the office of development, every school, college and unit of the university has been involved in some aspect of the effort of “The Difference Campaign.”
Malcolm added the campaign’s goal was set at $2.5 billion initially, and the fact it reached more than $3 billion was pleasantly surprising.
How does Wisconsin do?
Sandy Wilcox, president of the University of Wisconsin Foundation, said the last time UW accomplished a similar long-term capital campaign was in 2005 when the university raised nearly $1.8 million.
And this doesn’t speak very highly of UW. Remember, 3+ BILLION vs an inability to raise over 3 million.
In the midst of a struggling economy, a fundraising campaign sponsored in part by the University of Wisconsin has yet to reach the halfway point of its goal to raise $3 million for charity with only a week to go.
Whoever becomes the fabled ASM President would be smart to directly challenge UW-Madison to have higher standards and approach private funding measures as if we *need* to be like Michigan — with the nature of public funding for higher education and state of our economy, it’s not a matter of choice but rather an absolute necessity.
13 Comments
November 21, 2008 at 4:14 am
no need to take that step, we need to be more like princeton or yale, muck fichigan.
November 21, 2008 at 5:59 am
just to point out, I know relatives of mine who refuse to donate money as alumni because their kids who are actually very well qualified to come to Wisconsin (top 5% of class 1500+ SAT) and cannot get in. I understand the issues with Alumni status but look at places like IU that have both what I’ll call vertical alumni (parent and child) and horizontal (they go after siblings), the idea is if you can make the family more involved as a whole more money in the future.
I can say in my 3 years UW has not really endeared itself to me, we lost a lot of identity and have come out all the worse for it. I blame the over reliance at this point on large class workloads and less actual discussion. I would advance the plan that you should be able to sign up for classes outside of your major and set reqs as pass/fail and you would see a more active student population. Active student population = free press = more alumni funding. We need to expand our draw beyond sports, alumni from even 10 years ago come back see this town and school and say “this isn’t my school or town anymore”, we need to reconnect them somehow.
Just look at our alumni site vs theirs, if your an alumni which site makes you feel more warm and fuzzy in your cockels?
http://www.uwalumni.com/
http://alumni.umich.edu/
November 21, 2008 at 11:19 am
100 percent agree.
But for the record, Michigan isn’t a land grant school, it was created in Detroit in 1817 and in Ann Arbor in 1837…Michigan State was the first land grant school in 1855, the Morrill Act was passed in 1862. Even though UW was founded in 1848, it did not become a land-grant school until 1866.
A history lesson courtesy of Wikipedia.
November 21, 2008 at 1:56 pm
[...] I want to extend a discussion from my blog, the Critical Badger, to this website. Today, I wrote about the need for Wisconsin to follow Michigan and other successful public schools b… [...]
November 21, 2008 at 7:55 pm
You’d have a better point if it didn’t rely on a BH typo and a fundraising campaign that has nothing to do with raising money for the university. The ‘05 capital campaign was $1.8 BILLION, not million (http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/senate/2005/1107/Minutes20050926.pdf) and the $3 million goal is for Partners in Giving, which involves all state employees and raises money for United Way of Dane County (http://www.secc.wi.gov/).
November 21, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Well, Hey Danny, you’d have a better point if it didn’t rely on being wrong.
There is nothing controversial about what I am saying. UW System leadership even admits we are behind peers when it comes to fundraising and it DIRECTLY impacts ALL aspects of UW-Madison. Schools like Michigan are afforded better times, even in a tough economic climate, because of the money they can raise.
Now, in my post, I *specifically* cite the 1.8 BILLION number to compare what we consider a strong showing, to Michigan’s 3 BILLION. The 3 *million* was a play on comparison; yes, the charity drive is a totally different type of effort, so DIRECTLY comparing Michigan’s 3B to our 3M isn’t my point. Yes, reading the CB can be a bit of an exercise, requiring a conceptualization that isn’t me spelling arguments out A + B = C. The larger issue in that framing of the inquiry is that Wisconsin complains that it can barely raise a couple mil in this climate, while Michigan (I imagine them sitting behind a desk, lighting a cigar with $100 bills) laughs about how it was no biggie to raise 3B, almost double our last capital campaign.
I would *love* for you to come on here, use your name and defend UW’s fundraising. You’d be a real trailblazer, perhaps the only person to say “Yeah, it’s cool how we fall behind, but that’s fine with me.”
November 21, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Y’know, I really wasn’t criticizing your argument. But you make it easy to dismiss by comparing an apple to a misquoted orange and a half-eaten Choco Taco. Your point is sound, and fits in with your ongoing UW-should-pretty-much-be-Michigan theme.
November 22, 2008 at 8:58 am
makes sense in the mind of the cb, since he could wail a golf ball from his house in joe the plumber’s back yard into michigan.
November 22, 2008 at 10:35 am
Danny, you should work for UMich as a campus tour guide. You can talk all day about how wonderful they are compared to Bucky.
November 22, 2008 at 10:37 am
A little nuance, por favor?
November 24, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Anyone want to reference one way we certainly DON’T want to be like Michigan, i.e. over $11,000 tuition for in-state?
November 24, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Something tells me that Danny’s vision of UW doesn’t put affordability very high on the list, particularly if it weeds out the ignorant Sconnie yobboes that bring down our USNews ranking.
November 24, 2008 at 8:54 pm
See that’s crap. UWs fin aid PALES in comparison to the schools with better private fundraising. And the public schools that lead in graduating people with less debt include ucla and unc: great schools.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.