Corporations, calling themselves "Badger Advocates, are stepping up their attacks on not only State workers, but on the University of Wisconsin in their drive to place everything under the control of "market forces." The real aim is, of course, to further reduce their taxes that support public enterprises by privatizing the latter.
They frame this latest move as creating greater "autonomy" and cutting red-tape for the University of Wisconsin. Here is the essence of what they are proposing:
...the state would reduce funding to the universities; in exchange, the universities would be given new outcome-based autonomy in their day-to-day operations. The universities would be given more flexibility to set tuition, negotiate faculty contracts, and undergo capital projects, pursuant to meeting a number of accountability goals. As more goals are attained, more autonomy is granted by the state.
...Wisconsin, ...has traditionally had a “high state aid, low tuition” system of financing its university system. Currently, state government appropriates slightly over $1 billion per year to the University of Wisconsin System, which allows it to have the second-lowest tuition in the Big Ten Conference.
Since the merger of the UW System in the early 1970s, the taxpayer subsidy to the state’s public universities, which currently stands at over $1 billion annually, has served to insulate the UW from market forces.
