The Wisconsin Higher-Ed Reform Model

Provisions in a budget passed in the Badger State this previous summer require that faculty at Wisconsin’s two flagship universities—UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee—now teach at least one course per semester and 12 credit hours each school year. At smaller universities, the requirements are higher. Choleric and incredulous, professors turned to the local paper to vent their outrage.

Wisconsin demonstrates that even purple states can win meaningful, albeit limited, conservative victories. I come here not to critique that policy specifically. There’s a colorable case to be made on either side of it. Perhaps a biologist working at the edge of human knowledge would be better off researching than teaching. Conversely, I feel little sympathy for university faculty who must now set down their morning lattes long enough to give a lecture.

Instead, I simply want to note that Republican lawmakers managed to pass a conservative-coded policy in a purple state with a Democratic governor. It’s all well and good to point to Florida or Texas and wish that every state could do likewise. Unfortunately, not every state capitol boasts a conservative governor ready to pick controversial fights backed up by a large Republican majority. Wisconsin demonstrates that even purple states can win meaningful, albeit limited, conservative victories.

First and most importantly, purple states can leverage budget negotiations to play hardball. To misquote Tolstoy, every single-party state is alike, but every purple state is divided in its own way. If the governor’s office, legislative body, and state supreme court all boast conservative majorities, the only task is managing internal factions. How split majorities hold power varies state by state. In Wisconsin, Republicans control both the Senate and the Assembly, which allows them to contest and overrule a Democrat governor. In Nevada, it’s the reverse. Some state parties have slim majorities, others large.

Consequently, it’s hard to give a one-size-fits-all recommendation for higher-ed reform in every purple state. That being said, Wisconsin offers three broadly applicable principles for how to leverage limited political power.

First and most importantly, purple states can leverage budget negotiations to play hardball. Wisconsin’s teaching-requirement bill passed because Republican State Assembly speaker Robin Vos demanded it before he and his caucus would approve an additional $256 million in funding for the University of Wisconsin. This latest fight is only his most recent win through such a strategy.

In 2023, for example. Vos clashed with Governor Tony Evers over funding and DEI cuts. Evers signed the bill but wielded his line-item veto powers to protect DEI positions. In response, Vos refused to approve pay raises for university employees until Democrats accepted retrenchments.

Democrats caved, and the state university system had to freeze hiring, reassign DEI employees, prohibit DEI statements on student applications, and abolish affirmative-action policies.

Frustrated, Jon Shelton, a professor and faculty union leader in Wisconsin, took to the pages of Academe magazine to lament the “complete capitulation” of Democrats in the state. This episode confirms what Do No Harm’s Jay Greene has argued: that university support of DEI programs is shallow. Aside from a handful of true believers inside of campus DEI shops, most faculty bureaucrats care about tenure, their ambitions, and their paychecks. Threaten those, and conservative lawmakers can achieve wins elsewhere.

Presently, plummeting college enrollment strengthens any such conservative bargaining. While enrollment at UW-Madison has largely held steady, enrollment has collapsed across the rest of the system, and forecasts predict a continued downward trend. Reality is unforgiving, and fewer students will force difficult cuts whether the Left likes it or not.

As Shelton concedes, “UW-Oshkosh cut about 20 percent of its entire work­force, UW-Platteville laid off over one hundred staff, the chancellor at UW-Parkside upheld the dismissals of several beloved lecturers because of budget cuts, and, on my campus, our chancellor sought to eliminate degree options for students.”

If salaries or hiring are on the line, falling enrollments could force other useful housekeeping. Do you, dear professor, want to lose your job, or should we redirect grant funds from the DEI office? I’m not a betting man, but I know where I’d toss my chips here.

If salaries or hiring are on the line, plummeting college enrollment could force other useful housekeeping. The second path for higher-education reform is simple opposition. At the Conservative Education Reform Network (which I direct), we’re fond of emphasizing that conservatives are often better at explaining what we’re against than what we’re for. Through our network, we want to leverage the intelligent thinking of our members to propose and implement positive changes in our K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.

Do you, dear professor, want to lose your job, or should we redirect grant funds from the DEI office? That being said, it’s important to oppose bad things. If conservatives don’t have the numbers or access to the levers of power to implement positive changes, simply preventing universities from guzzling bleach—metaphorically speaking, of course—is a useful exercise.

In Wisconsin, Democrats seem to have one mantra: Spend, baby, spend! More subsidies for tuition, more construction, higher salaries, more staff, more, more, more. Elsewhere in his Academe essay, Shelton laments that, for all proposed funding increases, “the Republican legislature” has managed to pare them “down to virtually nothing in every budget.”

Trimming increased spending won’t push higher-education costs down. It won’t reorient colleges toward ideological diversity or protect Jewish students from harassment. It’s a purely oppositional “against” policy. But it will at least slow the ever-increasing tuition costs and stresses on the taxpayer. If all that Republicans can manage is to form a stopgap, that is a good in itself, however limited.

Finally, even in purple states, there are plenty of opportunities for simple, boring, “good governance” reforms. For example, Wisconsin recently clarified rules and procedures about transfer credits. Additionally, the Badger State has long had a trifurcated governance structure over its universities, including four-year, two-year, and technical college campuses, which has created unnecessary complexity. As budget pressures increase, it would behoove Republicans to position themselves as the party that actually has a plan to address this governance mess.

There is no shortage of ambitious conservative proposals for higher-education reform. Supplant the progressive, politically correct university with the classical university once again. Remake accreditation and thereby break a regulatory cartel that chokes out new universities and stymies intellectual diversity. Wield the leviathan power of the federal government to bludgeon flagship universities into a conservative mold.

But while Hail Mary throws sometimes work, I’d place far more confidence in the incremental advances, achievable through individual state houses, that move the ball a few yards at a time. The significant wins coming out of Wisconsin’s divided legislature prove that forward progress is achievable for conservatives even on a purple playing field.

Daniel Buck is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network, and a former teacher and school administrator.