Wisconsin just moved to eliminate tenure and weaken shared governance. Could the move be fatal to the University of Wisconsin?

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It’s been a tumultuous year for faculty members within the University of Wisconsin system, from threats to the Wisconsin Idea to a proposed $300 million budget cut to Gov. Scott Walker’s suggestion that professors do more work to compensate for the slash.

But many professors and other observers said the roller coaster hit a new low Friday afternoon when the state legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee approved, by a vote of 12-4, the elimination of tenure from state statute. The committee also approved adding new limits to the faculty role in shared governance and procedures for eliminating faculty members in good standing outside of financial exigency.

“It would be difficult to overstate
how destructive and unnecessary
the proposed changes are.”

-PROFS, a faculty advocacy group
Members of the committee said the changes—proposed in a budget motion—would give Wisconsin public institutions the flexibility needed to deal with the budget cut, which they also voted to reduce to $250 million over two years from $300 million. But others interpreted the motion as an attack on tenure and the traditionally strong system of shared governance in the state, which they said will cost the university system and Wisconsin in the long run.

If eventually passed by the full legislature, a Madison campus–based faculty advocacy organization, PROFS, said in a statement, the changes will “inflict lasting damage on a highly successful institution that was built and nurtured with major investments by Wisconsin taxpayers over a period of 167 years. … In addition to the profoundly damaging effects of the budget cut, it would be difficult to overstate how destructive and unnecessary the [finance committee’s] proposed changes to tenure and shared governance are.”