UW-Platteville is currently facing a $9.7 million structural deficit according to a statement Chancellor Evetovich sent out to staff earlier this year.
The cause of this deficit has been cited to come from four major sources: Rising costs, the tuition freeze, lowering enrollment and a severe lack of state support.
The tuition freeze, which started in 2013 and will last until the 2023-2024 fiscal year, caused UW schools unable to raise their base tuition for a decade. This was much to the benefit of students, especially those with in-state tuition, keeping college more affordable for more students.
However, this came with the drawback of giving UW-Platteville less money to work with from students’ tuition, meaning more money that needed to be spent had to be taken from somewhere else.
A tuition freeze is seen as good for enrollment, but between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2021, enrollment numbers fell from 8,779 students down to just 6,773 students.
With a large drop in enrollment, the tuition money needed to help improve and maintain campus also decreased significantly. While the problems have caused a dip in overall spending money for the university, these issues alone do not explain the size of the deficit.
The third problem for UW-Platteville is state funding. As a public university, UW-Platteville is funded by the state as an educational institute. However, as recently as this year, Republican lawmakers for Wisconsin cut state funding for the UW-System by $32 million.
According to a report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, “Funding for four-year campuses in Wisconsin was (for the 2022-2023 year) $15,079 per pupil, which ranked 43rd nationally and was well below the national average of $17,733,” meaning that not only is the Platteville campus making less money on enrollment, but the government also continuously fails to increase funding for UW-Platteville to help alleviate troubles.
This failure also led the UW System board of Regents to raise tuition by 5% across the board for in-state undergrads for the first time in 10 years.
Unfortunately, this deficit will lead to a loss of faculty starting this year at UW-Platteville. The University has enacted a “voluntary retirement plan” to encourage older staff members to step down early, as well as a wave of layoffs.
UW-Platteville is not the only university in the UW System affected by a large deficit. In fact, the UW System finished last fiscal year with a $33 million debt, with only two of the 13 four-year universities finishing with a positive income. Current projections point towards a similar trend this year with 10 of 13 universities finishing at a deficit again. UW-Oshkosh and UW-Parkside are either considering or have already laid off large numbers of employees to help make up for the spending.
In a statement about the current state of the UW System budget, Jay Rothman, President for the UW System, simply said, “This is not sustainable.”