to sync the cameras often although I you can hear how I react to that often
they make the guest clap just before I say welcome I'd like to ask you it's
really well applied for myself if that's I don't like it yeah anyway yes
Wisconsinites are nice they are yeah so thanks for for the opportunity yeah
we so appreciate you talking to us about it and yeah we can go ahead it's
just being a lifelong Wisconsin residents and alum here you know what's
happening with the UW system is it's something to see you know you never
thought that you would see that but that's just the preamble because I do want to
thank you for sitting down with us well I'm pleased to be here thank you for
the invitation so you held a position at UW colleges where you managed
enrollment how in your mind could this have been avoided well I think if there
had been a collective approach to looking at what was going to be coming
down the line in about 10 or 15 years with really acute thinking about what
we wanted to be as a system as as universities as we approach 2030 and 2035
taking into consideration things that we knew were real demographics right we
we've known for years not just in Wisconsin but across the country that
there was going to be a major change in the demographics that we're going to
impact colleges and universities that's certainly one thing but there are some
things that we couldn't really anticipate you know one of those
obviously being how people feel about a college or university education and what
Gen Z was going to do or be interested in when they got the college or what type
of experience they wanted how much they were willing to pay those things we
couldn't really see but the thing that we could was simple demographics and had
we started thinking about it in a proactive way early on I think we could
have had a robust conversation and come up with some reasonable solutions I don't
think that that would have meant that nothing would have changed or that there
wouldn't have been things that might have contracted but it might have been done
in a way that I think people would have found a little bit more reasonable it is
true that people have been talking about that so-called demographic cliff for
decades why the inaction well I you know I'll just speak broadly about higher
education in general I've worked in a number of different states I think that
there is this concept that if we continue to do what we're doing which is
really really good truthfully if we continue to do it the forces the market
forces the demographic forces won't impact us because what we're doing is
really really good work and it's having a major impact on society and the
economy so I think higher education has often been shielded from what businesses
find to be a harsh reality and now in higher education across the country and
of course Wisconsin as well we find ourselves in the middle right directly
in the middle of that reality as to the two-year colleges which are the ones
that are being announced are closing or have closed already was there ever a
benefit to the duplication of the four-year and the two-year campuses sure there
was absolutely four years and years the two-year UWs really behaved like the
elastic band for the system so as enrollment changed over time sometimes
there would be ballooning enrollments and then sometimes there would be a
decline and so the UW colleges for years served as that elastic band that really
managed I think quite well how many students were going into the four-year
institutions and managing that on the front end and so I think there was a time
where it did work really well the other thing is you know years ago there just
wasn't the technology available to do anything remotely or by distance and that
certainly over the past 20 or 25 years has changed things as well and I think
also and this is just my opinion but there was a significant tie to local
communities that students coming out of high schools had and that's changed
quite dramatically as well what about the duplication with the really robust
technical college system well I'm not sure that there's the amount of
duplication that that people think certainly the technical colleges now
offer the associate of arts and associate of science degrees which the the former
UW colleges offer but there's very different students that go to the two
different institutions and two different systems a lot of the students that come
into the technical college system are very very part-time picking up classes
when they can in the evenings after work and for those that are coming directly
at a high school they generally know what they want to do and my experience in the
UW colleges is that the students that came to the colleges were truly looking
to transfer as their primary goal and that's not true of of many of the
students that enter into the to the technical college system and yet that
has been kind of pushed that you can go to a technical college and then transfer
immediately into a four year that's true and we are quite honestly we are
talking about that because that's the reality I think as it relates to the
technical college systems technical college system but I'll talk about
Waukesha because that's the college where I'm serve as president we really
feel like we've got an obligation to offer all taxpayers everything we
possibly can and not just some because we're really beholden to the taxpayers in
our communities and so if they want to come to us for that type of degree then
we should offer it and I just if I can make one final point on that for decades
I think I came to Wisconsin in 2003 or 4 working for the UW colleges we have
been talking about increasing the number of baccalaureate degree holders in the
state and that's been a real priority but not a lot of things have been done to
actually do that now we can argue that there are certain priorities and programs
that have been put into place but by create by increasing the access points
in the freshman and sophomore year to be able to transfer to a baccalaureate
degree that's one of the ways that we're helping the state increasing
the number of baccalaureate degrees across across all counties so you you
speak to being accountable to the taxpayers in that regard technical
colleges are flush with funding as opposed to the state university system
why not just kind of have the technical college system take over the UW two
years yeah so if I could make a couple of points there's no doubt that the
technical college system is well funded but I think that there's been sort of a
misunderstanding about one of the recent studies that came out that's that focused
on full-time equivalencies most of the students at the technical college system
are part-time many at a four-year university are full-time and so when you
look headcount versus full-time students you get very very different
funding structures the other thing I'll say is that the technical college system
educates somewhere around 280,000 students a year I think the UW system is
somewhere around 160,000 I think somewhere around there so the technical
college system headcount is really really high and the way to think about the
expense of a student is it's not based on how many full-time students you have
it's based on the number of headcounts that you have because for each
student there's an expense but let's get back to your original question and I
think it was why not just merge these two systems together or the two-year
systems together my immediate thinking on that is what merger does is it
simply moves an existing issue or problem somewhere else it doesn't solve that
problem so for example if the two two-year systems colleges and the
tech colleges were combined the problem still exists the number of campuses the
declining enrollments the number of faculty and the overall financial
picture that doesn't change at all it shifts where that issue goes and who
has to solve it and so for that reason merger isn't a solution it just moves
the problem to a different place and yet I thought I read that you said that for
example at your technical college you have capacity you have space you have
the infrastructure so what does that mean well I can give you a real life
example of what we're doing right now so a chancellor money chancellor's
chancellor Moniz the chancellor at UW Milwaukee good friend and colleague of
mine we've been talking for a number of years and recently you've probably heard
that UW Milwaukee is closing their walker shot campus so what chancellor
Mony and I decided to do was not simply bring those the majority of those
students over should they want to continue to WCTC we decided to take a
significantly forward and I think what could be a model for the state and that
is we're going to build a UWM University Center right on our campus so that
students can participate with WCTC as well as UWM and what we really know is
going to happen is that a lot of students will start in their associate
degree of a variety of fields and end up taking baccalaureate degree classes
right on our campus the concept is that anybody in the community can take
anything from a short-term certificate all the way through graduate programs
right on our campus with seamless interaction so that students really
don't feel the sort of jerky thing that happens during a traditional transfer
process and how is that being looked at on the part of administration UW
administration or other campuses like it is a model well I I think into their
credit the other campuses are thinking we're going to wait and see if Chancellor
Mony and President Barnhouse and their teams can pull this off we know that we
will we're very excited about it and I think that the the response from both
systems has been I would say very positive and really supportive and I
think for the legislators that I've spoken with they're also quite supportive
of us taking a different look at how we can provide higher education in a
really strong partnership way almost like siblings and delivering for the
community getting back to the announcements of the closures of the two
year campuses what do you think of the way that's been managed well I'll just
start by personally saying that you know I worked for the UW colleges for nine
years initially as an assistant campus dean on the UW Shabogan campus and then
as associate vice chancellor for student services and enrollment here in Madison
so for me it's professionally certainly I understand the decisions that have to
be made I do sitting in the seat of president I understand with enrollments
and funding and competing demands that you have to make decisions particularly
as it relates to enrollment and when enrollment reaches a certain point on
any campus you have to make a decision about can we afford to do this or does
it draw tremendous amount of resources away from the other parts of the
university so for me there's a little bit of sadness because I know many of the
faculty and staff that were on all 13 of the two-year campuses but I also
understand professionally and practically that with declining
enrollments and without a comprehensive plan university leaders college leaders
have to make the decisions that are in the best interest of the long-term
viability of their institutions and so you would still be calling for a
comprehensive plan I think that ten years ago for sure if I'm thinking back
to 2013-14 I think at that time there could have been some consideration given
to what does a comprehensive plan look like and how do we put an enrollment
plan in place for a system I think at this point in time all of us in in
higher education are in the situation now that we were looking down the road
at it's here now and so I still think that any type of plan would be beneficial
it's just that when you're in the situation right once you're in the
theater so to speak the time to build a comprehensive plan has changed is past
perhaps what do you predict going forward well I think what we're going to see in
the state of Wisconsin is largely what we're going to see across the United
States and that is more campus closures and and more trimming of faculty and
staff and of programs and colleges and universities making decisions on the
curricular array that they provide and how robust and how comprehensive that
can be I do think that the future in Wisconsin might take a look at what UW
Milwaukee and WCTC are doing in building a university center on a
vibrant technical college campus and I think that that UWM and WCTC will
really show a path for the state and in many parts of the country about how we're
able to move forward and still provide unbelievable public higher education
and doing it in a way that's I think responsible of the taxpayer something
that that legislative officials can get behind and something that ultimately
delivers for for the community and for the region and for the state great rich
Barnhouse thanks very much thank you very much that was great interview really
yes it was really really good and really interesting and it really I think shed
a lot of light on this circumstance that we find ourselves in and it's it's so
awesome that you had that both that experience with colleges and now as the
president of the walk shop thank you tech college I really thank you and it is
really exciting this UWM thing has that already started or is that so we've we
started with it's all legal right so we started with MOUs we've applied for
accreditation because they need to accreditation to offer programs on our
site but I'll be honest with you I didn't want to get into too much deep put
out over my skis we're gonna offer PhDs on campus you know you know that that's
some of our fact a lot of our faculty are terminally-degreed so some of our
faculty will teach we already have Lakeland University on campus which I
probably should have mentioned I apologize and so they're transferring
they're why instead of walking across town or across the state they're walking
down the hall and in and entering into the baccalaureate degree on campus with
Lakeland and Lakeland like UWM they're gonna do what we need them to do which
is be responding to what the local taxpayer local businesses needs are so
you know we're not gonna offer a baccalaureate degree in medieval history for
example right because the employers would say Rich what are you doing so but
you know MBAs for sure economics finance accounting robotics you know
we've got the first artificial intelligence program in the state at the
undergraduate degree level and so what we're working with UWM we're looking
forward to them adding artificial intelligence and machine learning
because our you know we'll transfer right into there so the sky's really the
limit I'm thankful that I've got a partner in Mark Money who just said yep
let's do this and so when is the expectation that this so they're gonna
we're gonna have some of their staff on campus in January so I would imagine
some advisors some administrative folks and then we'll start offering classes
whenever they're ready to do so and we're gonna we're gonna offer them all over
campus so it's not like UWM's gonna be stuck in this one area you know you
could be walking across campus and you could be going from a diesel tech
program and walking past somebody working on a master's degree in
something and a classroom over here seems brilliant to me thanks you know I
just seems like common sense really it really really does Wow interesting
awesome
oh yeah we we started talking in the newsroom about this because I read an
article about Minnesota and how their enrollments are up and they they have
this huge budget surplus as we did and they poured a lot of that into higher
education and their enrollments are up and you know it just sounded wonderful
compared to right across the river and so I guess the question is what's
different well simply adding money doesn't solve the problem so if you add
a tremendous amount of money and there's no change that occur that that happens
first or part of the process in my experience whatever state you're in you
amplify the problem and it doesn't get better so without knowing exactly what
they did in Minnesota I have some idea there has to be change made and there
has to be a student population that's going to react to it in Wisconsin there's
probably not the same student population that's going to react as we look at the
demographic decline and to have that kind of enrollment boost they would also have
to have some of the things in place that would improve the process for students
so more students coming in but it changed in the way they sort of do
business as well as the degree programs that students are looking for Gen Z is
totally different right they want to what they're calling a skinny college
experience so they want the very best academic training experience that they
can get at the lowest cost without a lot of the frills which is totally
different than the millennials and their parents for that matter who wanted they
wanted the eighty million dollar recreation facility right and I'm not
saying that no Gen Zers want that of course they do but they're looking at
education differently and it's talked about in the Chronicle of Higher
Education recently about students are looking at what is my salary gonna be
what is my career gonna be 15 years ago it was you know I think I'd like to find
myself and learn more about myself and I want to find my purpose and Gen Z
certainly wants that but they're far more pragmatic and far more practical and
so making sure that the degree programs are lined up for those students as well
is different so I'm not a proponent of simply putting more money in that's
helpful but it will amplify what's already there it won't solve what's there
all right thank you I do know and we can we can stop the madness now we can
stop recording
well I'm gonna take that