In symbolic vote, UW-Milwaukee professors reject plan to lay off Waukesha, West Bend faculty

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In symbolic vote, UW-Milwaukee professors ******* plan to lay off Waukesha, West Bend faculty

In a vote that puts University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty at odds with their chancellor, the Faculty Senate rejected a proposal to lay off nearly three dozen tenured professors from the institution’s two branch campuses next year.

The vote is advisory and largely symbolic, aiming to pressure UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark ***** to back off his plan relieving professors who work for UWM’s Washington County and Waukesha campuses of their jobs.

“I’m wondering how comfortable we feel … with being pioneers in mass firings and undermining the circumstances by which all of us have come to have job security that we call tenure,” UW-Milwaukee history professor Rachel Buff said during the Wednesday meeting at the campus. “I think it’s a mistake to think we are insulated, those of us who are not (on the branch campuses), because what they can do to one person, they can do to anyone.”

The West Bend campus closed at the end of this school year. The Waukesha campus is slated to shutter after the spring 2025 semester. Faculty working at the two campuses are housed in an academic unit called the College of General Studies, which ***** proposes shutting down.

Two dozen professors voted against *****’s plan while 11 voted in favor of it. Even so, ***** can still move his proposal to the UW Board of Regents. If approved, it would mark the state’s largest layoffs of public university professors in recent memory.

For decades, UW tenured faculty could only be ***** off if the entire university declared a financial emergency. But the ***********-controlled Legislature stripped tenure protections from state law in 2015. The regents wrote a weaker version into policy that expanded the reasons tenured faculty could be ***** off to include elimination of an academic program.

Tenure is a job protection some professors earn after several years on probationary status. They can only be dismissed with just cause or ***** off through the policy. The purpose is to protect academic freedom, the principle that professors creating knowledge and expressing ideas should be free to do so without the threat of intimidation or retaliation.

The layoff policy has been applied just once before to a single professor. This time around, 35 tenured jobs are on the chopping block.

Unlike other UW institutions, all UWM branch campus faculty work in a separate unit

When UWM absorbed the Washington County and Waukesha campuses in 2018, it created the College of General Studies to house branch campus faculty. There was a reason behind this arrangement: UWM is a research institution, which has different expectations of its professors in terms of teaching and scholarship to be able to earn tenure.

Keeping the branch campus faculty separate ensured they remained eligible for tenure under their old rules, UWM argued.

But

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the siloed setup fostered feelings of resentment and neglect.

It also made their job security much more precarious compared to faculty at most other branch campuses. These faculty have been fully integrated into departments on the main campus and can move there when their own campus closes, an arrangement that has saved the jobs of UW faculty at the Richland Center, Marinette, Fond du Lac and Fox Cities campuses.

UWM cites declining enrollment, ‘unsustainable’ funding model

UWM 

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 to close the College of General Studies. Both the Washington County and Waukesha campuses have lost more than half of their students since joining UWM.

Nearly half of the College of General Studies’ budget comes from state taxpayer money while less than a third does for UWM’s main campus units, according to the 

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. Because of declining enrollment, the subsidizing of the branches would need to increase in the future. UWM said it could not afford to do so and would come at the expense of the main campus.

The proposal also cited increased competition from technical colleges, which recently began offering associate degrees.

About 64 branch campus employees who do not have tenure protections have already received layoff notices.

“I’m sorry we’re at this point,” ***** said during the Faculty Senate meeting. “This is not something that any of us would like to be in this situation.”

A small group of UWM professors known as the University Committee, all of whom work on the main campus, recommended *****’s proposal move forward.

Retaining the 35 professors would require $3.65 million, an amount that would increase about 4% each year, the report said. Most of the professors teach subjects that would place them in the College of Letters and Science. This college has its own financial problems, running its budget in the red for about 15 years because enrollment has declined 41% over the past decade.

The report also blamed the state Legislature for failing to invest more money in public universities.

Together, these circumstances “leave UWM with no clear feasible options for retaining these positions without risking greater campuswide financial instability,” the report said.

Is a college a ‘program’?

Most of the speakers at the meeting cast doubt on *****’s proposal and the University Committee’s report in support of the plan.

One argument made multiple times questioned whether the College of General Studies is a program that would even fall under the policy allowing for layoffs. UWM websites place the college on its

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but not on its

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.

The university said in its report “there is no question that a college, as a recognized academic unit, is a program,” which UWM chief legal counsel Joely Urdan reiterated during the meeting.

“False!” Tait Szabo, an associate professor of philosophy for the branch campuses, responded. “There is reasonable disagreement about this interpretation, so maybe we shouldn’t lay off faculty until that is settled.”

Those against the proposal also highlighted UWM’s plan to close the college yet keep some of its programs, move them to main campus and rely primarily on non-tenured instructional staff to teach.

“How can we invoke this regents policy for program closure to justify the layoff of faculty when all the programs that these faculty have been working in are being retained and just the division is being closed?” asked Stephane Scholz, a branch campus professor. “Is that not a misuse and misinterpretation among that regents policy?”

The plan calls for cutting three departments within the college and an online associate degree program but would keep a flexible associate degree program and a bridge program for students who do not meet admissions requirements at the main campus.

UW-Milwaukee proposal to lay off faculty could head next to UW Board of Regents

Will the Faculty Senate’s vote sway ***** from sending his plan to the board? He was unavailable to speak after the meeting and his spokesperson said the process was still underway.

“The Faculty Senate’s vote was not surprising given the impact of the proposal upon faculty and other (branch campus) staff,” the university statement said. “UWM made this proposal in full recognition of that unfortunate impact but faced with the realities of higher education today.”

The regents policy says layoffs should be invoked only “in extraordinary circumstances and after all feasible alternatives have been considered.”

***** said there was careful consideration of UWM’s ability to absorb 35 professors. Many at the meeting, however, questioned the extent of the exploration.

“We talk a lot about best practices in education,” UW-Milwaukee Waukesha professor Ellyn Lem said. “******* tenured professors without making every effort for thoughtful re-employment is never going to be a best practice.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

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