Finally tonight, a new study from the UW-Madison Center for Research on the
Wisconsin Economy asks, is the UW-Madison in decline? Joining us now is Ananth Shashadri, a professor of economics and co-author of the study, and thanks for your time today.
Thank you for having me.
So your paper looks at different rankings of UW-Madison programs compared to other universities, and you've shown a significant decline in some overall rankings since 2010.
How do you come to that?
Correct. So we look at four different measures of rankings. One is the very popular US News & World Report college rankings of undergraduate programs.
We look at rankings of doctoral programs, we look at R&D research rankings, how much in terms of research and development, money do we bring in, mainly from the federal government, and then finally global rankings of universities.
So in the first ranking, we actually find that in terms of America's best colleges, we pretty much caught up with where we were like a couple of decades ago.
Around 34-35, we're kind of back there. Some of this has changes in the methodology, and some of this is just active investments on the part of UW-Madison.
But in the other three dimensions, we find that we've basically declined, and most pronounce as a decline over the last decade or so.
So let's talk about that timeline, because 2010 was when Scott Walker became governor, Republicans took over the legislature, and they started about a decade-long process of forcing the UW to spend down its reserves and cutting, freezing tuition, cutting spending.
Is there correlation and causation lining up in those areas?
It's a bit hard to say. We don't exactly get into the details of why the rankings kind of fell.
Interestingly, one of our follow-up papers is going to ask the question, is the Wisconsin taxpayer a little too stingy when it comes to funding UW-Madison?
And we're kind of right there in terms of the median of our peers.
If you look at state appropriations for undergraduate student FTE, we're not that far off from our median.
So I would say there's not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that that's the major cause of the decline.
I do believe that there are other aspects, both internal and external, that we could address in order to better serve both the state of Wisconsin and our students.
And your paper also looked at the research and development money.
And UW used to be second in the nation. They've dropped to eighth.
A lot of that is individual professors who write some of those grants and bring in the research for their particular areas of study.
And once again, we've seen a lot of, I guess so-called university superstars get poached by other universities.
How much of that is related to pay and the environment and replacing them from within, I guess?
Sure. So one of the things we're not as good at as we, as relative to our peers, is our big grants.
So I know war and the Office of Vice Chancellor for Research are very focused on trying to get in these multidisciplinary teams,
you know, getting in 30, $50 million grants from the federal government.
One thing that we've got to be better at is to be a little more nimble.
And as a union example, in 2020, 2021, AI was a big initiative, right?
So are we investing in AI and moving resources to the priority areas of the federal funding agency as fast as our peers?
And so something like that would really help with showing up our R&D funding.
No matter the cause of the decline, your paper looked at the global impact.
And I want you to explain to people how these rankings do matter for some countries and whether they recommend students come here.
Sure. I mean, international rankings are very popular. It's generically, I mean, students all over the world look at these international rankings of world universities.
We note in the paper that it actually has bite, for instance, in the UK government or the Chinese government,
get priorities for students who graduate from a top 50 global university.
So it's not just the signaling value associated with the ranking, but it actually has real consequences.
So does that mean we could see fewer foreign students on campus?
I know in the past, that had been a big source of tuition coming in.
Right. No, I think as an institution, we remain an excellent institution.
So by no means is the report trying to sell alarmist bells, but I think it's more of a call to arms to make sure that we allocate resources nimble and efficiently.
And yes, I think I do think we would see pressure in terms of international students, excellent international students wanting to choose UW Madison as a destination,
especially if you further continue to decline in these global rankings.
Now in your executive summary, you say UW Madison will benefit from a renewed commitment to excellence.
What does that mean? And without more funding, how does that happen?
Yeah, I mean, funding is a really critical part of the story, right?
So I'll go back in terms of funding and say that if you ask the question, where are we against our peers,
it's not state appropriations where we're very different than our peers, it's undergraduate in state tuition.
Right. This is a general trend towards a lot of concern with increasing tuition,
but UW Madison is excellent in ensuring that students graduate debt-free.
So as a source of revenue, that's kind of where we stand out relative to our peers.
In terms of being nimble, in terms of allocating resources, what I had in mind is the fact that, you know,
over the course of the last few decades, student demand has changed, right?
So now computer science is the most popular major.
Priority, so the federal government has changed.
So in order to be able to both, you know, ensure that we cater to those students and cater to the new areas
that are essentially being priority areas, then we've got to be moving resources much more nimbley than we had in the past.
All right. We'll leave it there.
Nam Chishadri, thanks for your time today.
Happy to be here. Thank you.
So for more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at pbswisconsin.org and click on the News tab.
That is our program for tonight. I'm Zach Schultz.
Have a great weekend. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
You