Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a reformist conservative and Republican presidential hopeful for 2016, has become a media target, from making a stink of Walker evading an evolution question to obsessing over his college years. Next up: Ripping Walker's proposed cuts to the state university system's operating budget.
New York Times reporter Julie Bosman took advantage of Tuesday's front page to portray Walker's university cuts as tarnishing the very ideal of the university in "2016 Ambitions Seen in Bid for Wisconsin Cuts."
Atop a steep hill on the University of Wisconsin campus is a granite boulder affixed with a bronze plaque honoring the university system’s lofty mission: to benefit the entire state by promoting public service and a search for truth.
Summed up in one phrase -- “the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state” -- the mission statement, known as the Wisconsin Idea, has been cherished by educators and graduates for a century. So when Gov. Scott Walker, a second-term Republican, presented a budget this month proposing to delete some of its most soaring passages, as well as to sharply cut state aid to the system, he ignited a furious backlash that crossed party and regional lines.
“We were really upset about it,” said Tony Sumnicht, the student body president at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, a small college in the western part of the state, echoing a sentiment voiced by some Republican lawmakers. “The Wisconsin Idea is the philosophy that during our years in college we live and learn by.”
Mr. Walker hastily backtracked, attributing the proposed changes – which included inserting a call “to meet the state’s work-force needs” – to a “drafting error” by aides.
But to many Wisconsinites, it appeared that this was no mistake, and that the governor, who was re-elected in November, was intentionally sending a pugnacious message to an audience beyond the boundaries of his state: the conservative caucus voters of neighboring Iowa, the first stop in the presidential sweepstakes.
Unlike the Washington Post, which covered the story with less liberal drama, the Times buried Walker's point on tuition freezes:
Mr. Walker’s budget, which must be approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature, calls for a 13 percent cut in state aid across the university system, with its 13 four-year universities and 180,000 students, for a total decrease of $300 million over the next two years.
The governor, who has a son at the university’s Madison campus, has said that the cuts should go hand in hand with a promise to give greater autonomy to the system, a move that he said would free it to trim costs. Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, said in an email that the $300 million cut was “only 2.5 percent of the total U.W. System operating budget.”
“Governor Walker is proposing to provide the University of Wisconsin System with the authority and flexibility that it has been seeking for years, while freezing tuition for two years to maintain college affordability for our state’s hard-working families,” she said. “These reforms will give the U.W. System the power to transform higher education in this state for the future by empowering leaders, protecting taxpayers and promoting long-term stability.”
But to his critics, Mr. Walker, in both his proposed cuts and in the discussion that arose over the Wisconsin Idea, is trying to capitalize on a view that is popular among many conservatives: that state universities have become elite bastions of liberal academics that do not prepare students for work and are a burden on taxpayers.
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Even some of Mr. Walker’s supporters, who cheered his initial run for the governorship and helped him survive a recall election in 2012, said they were questioning the governor’s budget proposal and its potential consequences for higher education.
Bosman linked the Washington Post's reporting about Walker's lack of a college degree to the current controversy.
Many residents in the liberal enclave of Madison, where Mr. Walker is deeply unpopular, see his willingness to slash funding for higher education as a reminder of his background: Mr. Walker abruptly dropped out of Marquette University, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee, during the spring semester of his senior year.
“Walker doesn’t value the university,” said Jessi Mulhall, a government worker, pausing during a chilly walk down State Street, near the campus. “He has disdain for anything intellectual. He doesn’t care if the populace is educated.”
Others shrugged off criticism of the governor, suggesting that many people in Madison were still furious at Mr. Walker for curtailing the power of labor unions.
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But Republicans in the Legislature said that educators were exaggerating the impact of the cuts. Scott L. Fitzgerald, a Republican who is the Senate majority leader, said in an interview that while the budget called for a “significant reduction” in higher education funding, he had had very little response from his constituents so far.
Some campuses have cash reserves that they can draw from to reduce the pain from budget cuts, he said, though “I would suspect that the impact would probably be more severe on a smaller campus that doesn’t have a lot of cash in reserve.”
Some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about the depth of the proposed cuts, raising the possibility that the Legislature will try to soften them.
Walker received a months'-long stink-eye glare from the Times during his successful 2011 battle to strip collective bargaining from the state's public unions. Reporter Monica Davey was sour on Walker: "[Walker's] approach, it seems, has always been the same. He is uncompromising, polarizing, headline-grabbing, austere."
In February 2011, as the always vulgar, sometimes violent pro-union protesters continued to occupy the state capitol in Madison, Times reporters ridiculously likened the battle in to the Arab Spring: "The parallels raise the inevitable question: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights?"
