announcement that UW Oshkosh Fox Cities will close at the end of
this school year brings to six the number of two year campus
closures across the state, what some have called a demographics.
Cliff leaves, enrollments at the branch campuses, falling to the
point where the UW administration says the status
quo is not sustainable because even with deep cuts and
closures, the universities of Wisconsin System projects a
nearly $17.5 million deficit through 2025. Now, it's not like
the writing hasn't been on the wall, or that people haven't
tried to stave off closures. But our next guest says, what's
happening now? Didn't have to be inevitable. Rich Barnhouse is
President of the Waukesha County Technical College and a former
vice chancellor in charge of enrollment at UW colleges. We
should note PBS Wisconsin is part of UW-Madison.
>> I think if there had been a collective approach to looking
at what was going to be coming down the line and 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 were
going to impact colleges and universities. That's certainly
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 to 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?
>> You know, I'll just speak broadly about higher education
in general. I've worked on 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.
For years and years, the two year UW 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.
>> Why not just kind of have the technical college system take
over the UW two years? >> 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 just 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 Chancellor Mahoney. Chancellor. Chancellor
Milwaukee, a 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 Waukesha campus.
So what Chancellor Mahoney and I decided to do was not simply
bring those the majority of those students over, should they
want to continue to Wkctc. We decided to take a significant
leap forward. And I think what could be a model for the state,
and that is we're going to build a, university center right on
our campus so that students can participate with Wkctc as well
as, 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,
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
like it is a model? >> Well, I, I think and to their
credit, the other campuses are thinking we're going to wait and
see if Chancellor Mooney 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 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 almost like siblings, and