The Universities of Wisconsin plans to close UW-Milwaukee’s branch campus at Waukesha in spring 2025. UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha is the fifth two-year branch campus to close in the past 18 months due to “declining enrollment, shifting demographics and budgetary constraints.”
Around 550 full-time equivalent students are currently enrolled at UWM-Waukesha according to UW-Milwaukee chancellor Mark Mone. The campus used to operate independently of UW-Milwaukee as the UW-Waukesha, before the two merged in 2018. UWM-Waukesha has seen a total enrollment decline of more than 65 percent from 2014 through 2023.
Mone spoke at a news conference following the announcement of UWM-Waukesha’s closure. “Today, higher education is challenged,” Mone stated. “We need to make very difficult decisions, to, in every possible hope for opportunity, avoid some of the more consequential types of decisions that we may see in the future.”
Mone also spoke about how the cost to run the Waukesha campus is the same per student as it is to run the main UW-Milwaukee campus, but students in Waukesha pay around half as much in tuition.
The Waukesha campus closure is a part of an increasingly more common trend of branch campus closures in the UW System. The UW-Green Bay announced that it will suspend in-person classes at its Marinette County campus after the spring 2024 semester. Additionally, in-person classes at UW-Milwaukee in Washington County and UW-Oshkosh at Fond du Lac will end in June. UW-Platteville at Richland has been closed since May 2023.
A statement was released from UW-Milwaukee reading, “as state funding shrinks, many institutions like UW-Milwaukee are more reliant on tuition dollars. As fewer traditional college-aged students choose to pursue degrees, universities in Wisconsin and across the country face unprecedented financial pressures.” The statement went on to say that UW-Milwaukee had to make the difficult choice of closing their branch campus to continue to move forward and away from unsustainable operations.