The Board of Regents decided after a unanimous vote to approve the Universities of Wisconsin’s 2025-2027 biennium operating budget request. The request would allocate $855 million in funding to Wisconsin’s public universities.
The budget increase is a part of an initiative dubbed “Up to the Middle” with the goal of having Wisconsin’s public universities move up from the bottom 10 for state funding.
“It’s time Wisconsin escapes the Bottom 10 in public funding and gets Up to the Middle,” said UW System President, Jay Rothman. “This budget request will spur innovation in research and teaching, make a degree more affordable for our students most in need, develop talent by focusing on student success, preserve accessibility and ensure quality.”
The increased budget would go to promoting programs that emphasize student talent development, a 5% general wage increase for staff and faculty and investments in innovation including the creation of new Artificial Intelligence hubs throughout the UW system.
In addition to new programs being implemented in UW schools, the budget increase also hopes to allocate $260 million in repairing aging facilities and $467 million in the construction of new facilities.
Rothman additionally told Regents that under this proposal, he would not recommend tuition increases over the period covered by the biennial budget.
Over the past few years, Wisconsin state funding for public schools has dropped 18%, which has forced universities to become more dependent on higher tuition revenue to continue operating. This, along with other factors, has led to a decrease in enrollment for some UW schools, and has forced many satellite universities to shut down indefinitely, such as UW-Platteville Richland Center, UW-Oshkosh Fond du Lac, UW-Green Bay Marinette Campus, UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha and UW-Milwaukee at Washington County.
“One thing seems very clear: An investment in the Universities of Wisconsin is an investment in Wisconsin,” Rothman said. “The Universities of Wisconsin will be serving the state for generations to come, and the investments we make now will carry through far into the future. The investments we fail to make will also have consequences that will be generational.”
The now approved budget is slated to be submitted to the Department of Administration in September.
