By: Jason Tran
Latest Republican presidential candidate, Governor Scott Walker, signed Wisconsin’s $73 billion state budget, cutting university fundings by $250–reduced from $300 million by the legislative committee. Along with the recent changes to tenure system, Wisconsin’s universities must make hard decisions of how to maintain and attract exemplary faculty.
Tenure, contractual right, provides job security to professors. A professor, who attained tenure through a probationary period, cannot be terminated without a just cause–protecting a professor’s personal beliefs and personal or political conflicts.
The new changes to the tenure system in Wisconsin will give the University of Wisconsin system Board of Regents the agency to set tenure policies themselves instead of the state. Scott Walker claims the changes will “modernize the concept of tenure by authorizing the Board of Regents to enact such policies.”
In addition, Walker froze the tuition of University of Wisconsin to make it more affordable for college and potential students.
With the recent funding cuts, tenure protections look vulnerable. Tenure professors’ jobs are at stake as the Board of Regents look to cut costs. 16 of the 18 The Board of Regents deciding the future of the tenure system were appointed by the governor which can complicate the issue with party bias.Higher education groups and unions are enraged because they believe the new changes will decrease academic freedom–research and teaching content–in the long run and will push potential professors away. The lifetime job protection promotes a healthy, encouraging atmosphere for innovative ideas and intellectual freedom. Research performed by professors create prestige in their interested field, which the knowledge is transferred to students or a larger audience. The new changes to the tenure protections will deter potential professors from wanting a career at the University of Wisconsin; thus might lower the academic standards.