Wisconsin Public Television University Place The Future of Public Higher Education  What the Wisconsin Idea Could or Should Mean  March 29, 2012 UP707   cc >> Michael Olneck: As Sara said, I'm Michael Olneck. I am emeritus professor in educational policy studies and sociology. I'm very happy to have shared with Sara the task of organizing this conference, and very, very happy to welcome the members of the next panel who are going to speak to the idea of what the Wisconsin Idea should mean, what it can mean. And, as David Ward suggested, what it comes to mean can be very different depending on the context, depending on the era, and depending on from what perspective people are speaking and acting. Our panel members include representative Cory Mason, who is a member of the Assembly from Racine. He is a member of the Legislative Joint Finance Committee and the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources. Among other things, he's a sixth-generation Racine resident and a graduate of Case High School. He received his BA in philosophy here, and that's why, actually, he is here. If you heard the committees I just mentioned, you didn't hear education committee, so you might be wondering why is Cory here. And the answer is that my colleague Harry Brighouse from philosophy, when I was asking him about being a part of this conference said, you know who you really have to get for the Wisconsin Idea is Cory Mason because when Cory was student here, I gather, or while you were here, he had asked Harry about something in one of his books like why didn't you talk about the Wisconsin Idea? And Harry, also from being across the Atlantic, stated Ward didn't know what the Wisconsin Idea was or even if you're from New York you wouldn't necessarily... 

[LAUGHTER] But if you know history, you'd know. Anyway, I gather it was Cory who really genuinely inspired Harry Brighouse to learn about and to care about the Wisconsin Idea. And he said if you want a public official who knows about it, thinks about it, feels about it, get Cory. So we're very happy to have you here. Todd Berry, next to him, is president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance since 1994. He served in public, private, nonprofit sectors, at one point was assistant director for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, and executive director of the Governor's Tax Reform Commission. He's been a member of the Dane County Board, Jefferson School Board, CESA #2 Board of Control. He has served on the North Central College of Illinois' Board of Trustees. He holds bachelor's and a doctoral degree from here as well as master's in planning and policy and business administration, and one from Harvard, the other from the University of Chicago. Todd is somebody who is very concerned with the role of higher education in the well-being of our state, in the capacity of our state to sustain quality education, and we welcome him. 

Thank you. Allie Gardner, who I don't know if I've been introduced to. Hello. >> Hi. >> Was born in Madison. Yes. Went to Edgewood here and is an undergraduate. She is the chair of the Associated Students of Madison, ASM, and somebody who works very hard on this campus and I would say in Washington for the interests of students. And we're glad you were released on your personal recognizance to come back. And she plans to go into community organizing and possibly, and this is the best, return to grad school in EPS or sociology. 

That's excellent. [LAUGHTER] My colleague, Sara Goldrick-Rab, you've met. She is an associate professor, both in EPS and sociology. She attempts, in her work, to unpack the causes and consequences of socioeconomic inequality, especially as it relates to college attainment. She is one of the few people, or maybe increasing number of people, who uses a range of social science methodologies in her research. It's not limited to qualitative or quantitative. She is in the midst of several experimental studies that are part of a William T Grant Faculty Scholars project called Rethinking College Choice in America. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. I'm very happy to welcome everybody and turn it over to Todd. No, no, no. 

Sorry. I was looking at Cory. Turn it over to Cory. Folks will speak for up to 10 to 15 minutes. I want to give everybody a chance at the end to respond to one another, to converse, and then we should have plenty of time, we go to 4:30, to have a generous discussion from the floor with panel members. >> They're speaking and we're responding. Did you say that? >> They're speaking and they're responding. It was never 100% clear to be exactly. [LAUGHTER] Because I asked are you going to make your own points, and that's part of, I guess, responding. Anyway, I'm just going to moderate. 

[LAUGHTER] >> Good afternoon, everyone. This is worse than church. Good afternoon, everyone. [LAUGHTER] My name is state representative Cory Mason, and I'm a proud graduate of the UW philosophy department, which makes me marketable enough to be a state legislator. [LAUGHTER] I'm delighted to be here and really excited to be invited to talk about this topic. The Wisconsin Idea is actually something I have a passion about. Before I begin, there's a couple people I want to thank and mention. First, and not the least of which, is Mr. Miller, who's an archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society and helped me prepare some of the information I have here today. But I would be remiss if I didn't thank my mentor and old philosophy professor Harry Brighouse who's been really instrumental in giving me new and different ways to think about the world and challenge the things that I confront on a daily basis. And since graduation, I'm happy to say, has remained a good friend. 

And I guess, I'll start by talking about my first experience dealing with the Wisconsin Idea was a bit atypical. I, between my sophomore and junior year of my undergraduate here, was home and it was 1996, and there was a recall election, something I'm a little bit familiar with, that the state's now becoming familiar with, there was a recall election in Racine for the state senator over the stadium tax to build the Miller Park for the Brewers. And I thought I'm a good democrat, I should go down there and volunteer some of my time. Long story short, the next thing I know, the democrats win and I wind up with a full-time job in the legislature working for then-senator Adelman, who's now a federal judge, and thought how am I going to finish my degree? And it basically meant that I became a non-traditional student that was working full-time at the legislature as a staffer and going to school part-time here. That same year, there's something called the Wisconsin Blue Book that comes out every two years. It's basically an almanac of Wisconsin politics that the legislature publishes, and in it there was an article about the Wisconsin Idea in its heyday. And, to me, this was sort of like the greatest discovery ever because it was about how almost 100 years ago, 100 years ago now but 85 years ago then, there was this great nexus between this end of State Street and the other end of State Street, and that they actually accomplished amazing things by working together. So I became inspired about this because I was getting this great education, practically speaking, got to clerk the Senate Judiciary Committee at 22 years old and really learned some fantastic things, and then would take philosophy courses over the lunch hour or at night. And it was a great time. And I just thought, wow, it would be so inspiring if these great institutions could rediscover and rekindle that nexus. 

And so it is with that passion that I've always been talking about the Wisconsin Idea. And when I met Harry for class, he had written this book called School Choice and Social Justice, the conclusions of which I found atrocious, but the point that I thought was interesting about it is he was talking about the school -- you in a way that nobody had really been thinking about in those terms before. It was a new way to think about it, to talk about it, and put it in terms of social justice, which, I thought, was very interesting. And I said, why aren't you talking to state legislators about this because this is a very informed, well thought out public policy position that policymakers have no connection to, and what about the Wisconsin Idea? And so from there we've had a number of conversations about that, and I'm happy to say I might have had some small influence in the way he looks at his work. But here's what, I have two big thoughts about the Wisconsin Idea that I want to share with you today. Number one, I am annoyed with which the way it is talked about as this great historical, once upon a time sort of thing and would like to see it reinvigorated in its heyday almost 100 years ago. Number two, my thoughts about what it means to give public access and public interest and what a public university is might be broader than what you're thinking about in the next couple days, but I want to challenge your thinking about it because when I think about the public interest of the public university, I'm not just thinking about how we win people over with our utility as an economic engine or our utility in terms of access and tuition. It's something far greater that I think harkens back to the idea of the Wisconsin Idea. The other thing that I have to mention in terms of access, and I'm only going to talk on it briefly, but I think it's so important and I wish the chancellor were still here to see this. So if we have another budget deficit, and I'm sure we will sometime again in the future, the easiest place for legislators like me to cut is the university system. 

It is the easiest place to cut because there is no consequence. None. And that, as a graduate and somebody who loves the University of Wisconsin, is really frustrating. So a $250 million cut, perhaps the single biggest cut we've seen, supplemented by another $60 million cut as part of the budget adjustment that came later, and I couldn't get a clear and concise, other than a very strongly worded letter from the chancellor, there was no outcry on what this would mean to our communities. I couldn't get UW Parkside to explain to me what this would mean for programs or for students or tuition or access. Put in short, the University of Wisconsin does a horrible job advocating for itself in the legislature, and that has got to change. Because what you have in terms of raw materials with students and alumni and faculty all over the state is a great untapped resource that has not demand the real consideration that the university deserves in the state budget, and until that changes you will continue to be the easiest place to cut. And that will affect our future students and the future economic growth of this state. So I plead with those in this room who listen and those beyond, the university system has got to find a way to be an advocate for itself. Broadly speaking, though, what I intended to talk about is when people say the Wisconsin Idea, I've come to learn that they think it means a bunch of different things. 

Sometimes they think it means innovation, or maybe it means a breakthrough at the University of Wisconsin in a specific field. Maybe it means a way to brand the university. That what makes us different. We've got Badgers football and the Wisconsin Idea. But it's not entirely clear what that means. Maybe it's a radio network, the Wisconsin Ideas Network. Maybe it means the borders of the university are the borders of the state, and you certainly hear that most often in the simple definition of it. And certainly UW Extension still speaks to that. What Babcock did over a hundred years ago speaks to that. At its height, Professor Frederick Jackson Turner said, "But quite as much in the field of legislation and of public life in general as in the industrial world the is expert needed. 

The industrial conditions which shape our society are too complex, problems of labor, finance, social reform, too difficult to be dealt with intelligently and wisely without the leadership of highly educated men, and women, familiar with the legislation and literature on social questions in other states and nations." This was at a time when it was unheard of for the universities to be advising legislatures. Its origins come from John Bascom himself, who said, "There is a harmony of productive action by which the gains of all are secured, and the laws of this harmony are political economy." And his students, famously, were Robert La Follette and Charles Van Hise. And he also brought Ely to the UW, who will become import in this story as well. So, Professor Ely was a professor of economics whose students were John R Commons and Charles McCarthy, probably the two most important figures when it comes to the Wisconsin Idea and its influence of public policy. He also got into a bit of trouble, but I wanted to talk about this trouble he got into because I think it serves and important reminder. All too often the university is told don't get involved in public policy. We're supposed to be out of it. We're just there to do research, not really offers opinions. And Ely offered opinions, and those opinions went on to be the germ that went on to create things like unemployment insurance and workers compensation, minimum wage, all kinds of things. But there was, the then-superintendent at Wisconsin really didn't like Ely. 

He thought he was too much of a radical. And there was this great trial that the Regents had and absolved him and came out with this great statement which has now become almost a model of this state, and certainly one of the rallying cries of academic freedom in this state and in this country. When they said, "Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." This was because he was getting in trouble for offering input on public policy and taking stands on some of the big issues of the day. So Charles McCarthy was a student of Ely, and this is a picture, this relief is a picture in the assembly chamber at Wisconsin. It's right at the front of the hall. There are no reliefs of any legislators in the hall, but there is a relief of this man, Charles McCarthy, who is the first director of the Legislative Reference Bureau. And while he had that appointment, it was an appointment from the UW. He was UW faculty when he served in that role. And he, literally, wrote the book on the Wisconsin Idea, now 100 years old, and if you want to be inspired about what a university can and should do for the public interest in this state, I would encourage you to read it. It has a beautiful foreword by Teddy Roosevelt that makes him sound a little bit like John Rawls, believe it or not. 

And goes on to an amazing influence on what public policy can be and should be for a state. He is in part responsible for unemployment insurance, workers compensation. He invented the idea of the technical college system, the apprenticeship model, all of which became adapted as national policy. Charles McCarthy also said this great thing in this foreword to this book. He was a student here and said this about his work at the legislature. He said, "I, a wandering student, seeking knowledge, came knocking at the gates of the great University of Wisconsin, and it took me in, filled me with inspiration, and when I left its doors the kindly people of the state stretched out welcoming hands and gave me a man's work to do." John R Commons, the professor of economics, he was appointed with the encouragement of McCarthy and other legislators to the Wisconsin Industrial Commission, and he helped create unemployment insurance and workers compensation. He was on the Wisconsin Minimum Wage Commission and Wisconsin Civil Service Law, which was the precursor to collective bargaining laws in this country, and he helped create the Public Service Commission. Not bad for a guy who's an economist and a professor at the University of Wisconsin. [LAUGHTER] And here he is, I guess he would be second to the right on the last of an individual receiving the first unemployment check in Wisconsin. It was considered a great step forward in Wisconsin in economic security for tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens. 

Edwin Witte, a generation later, succeeds McCarthy, and, as the LRB director, still had that appointment as a professor at the University of Wisconsin but also served as director of the Legislative Reference Bureau, bought very much into Bascom's idea of political economics and why that was so important. And he invents, literally invents with Altmeyer, social security. He is appointed by FDR to come and chair the commission on economic security and comes up with the idea of social security. Now, that's an amazing legacy, and those are the big pillars when I think of the golden era of the Wisconsin Idea that really influence public policy, not just for this state and not just to secure a middle class in this state, but became national models. But the amazing thing to me as I learned about this history is you hear these names and they're peppered all over the campus. Witte and Bascom and Commons. But for me, coming to the university, only thing I knew when I came to the university about Witte is that you didn't want to live in the dorm named after him. [LAUGHTER] And they called it -- Witte when I went to school here. [LAUGHTER] That was all I knew about Witte. That was all the name meant to me, and I am constantly surprised when I talk to different classes and colleagues, both legislatively and if I'm every invited here in the university, I say do you know what the Wisconsin Idea is? And you usually get blank stares or maybe a couple people know, but it's really not embedded in our culture the way it should be, this great legacy that we gave to the state. 

So, at its best, I would hope that the Wisconsin Idea employed the expert advice of the University of Wisconsin to advise the legislature on how to address the biggest problems facing the state. These solutions can be so successful that they become national, maybe even international, models. To this day, many of them are the structures that help hold up the middle class in Wisconsin. That is, when I think of the Wisconsin Idea and what a public university should do, is what I think of. It's not just that very important question of access and students and an economic engine that's so important to the future innovation of the state, it is also a university that informs what it means to be in Wisconsin. And that, a hundred years ago, is why Teddy Roosevelt called it the greatest public university in America. But at the very least, the Wisconsin Idea could reinvigorate the nexus between the legislature and the university. There is no major issue facing the state, from issues ranging from economics to natural resources, where the state-funded research should not inform public policy, but there's no such nexus that exists today. It just doesn't. Sometimes, occasionally, you'll get a professor to come and talk about an issue where they have some expertise, but it should be a matter of course, I think, where the legislature is reaching out to the university and the university is embracing back and saying we've been doing really important research that gives you the best expert advice on how to address these issues. 

And for too long, even though we're only a mile apart, culturally it's as though we're a hundred miles apart. And if we're going to think about what it means for, whether it's pedagogy, I know people have talked about what would it mean for distance learning or blending of some of the departments and having more transparency, think of what it would mean once again if part of what it meant to be at the University of Wisconsin as a faculty member or a researcher or even as a student you were called upon to give input to the great issues of the day, including public access to the university system and the technical college system, including, I hope one day, real advocacy on behalf of the university, but also in every other policy matter that matters. I'll give you two examples that I've sort of insisted on in my time in the legislature. We have an infant mortality crisis in Racine where we have the highest African American infant mortality rate in the country. It's almost 3% that don't live to see their first birthday. And while I was creating legislation to create a pilot project about it, I called the School of Public Health here on campus and said do you have anybody who has expertise on this? And they said, in fact, we have a public health -- who would love to work with you on it. And he came to my office two days a week, and we made sure that we put together a plan that was evidence-based and researched and based on what had worked in other communities, and we put it into statutes here. That is but one example of the Wisconsin Idea. I will have to leave here at 4:15 because I'm going back at 6:30 to do a community event with the University of Wisconsin Parkside and the City of Racine and myself who opened up an environmental education center on the Root River in the middle of a central city in Wisconsin, in downtown Racine, and it has really been pushing the envelope with the University of Wisconsin about what is their role in addressing redeveloping this economic corridor, in terms of educating people about natural resources in our community. And it has been a great joy to do that. 

We have a new provost at the University of Wisconsin and a new chancellor, actually, who, when they inherited this, they were like why are we running a community center in downtown Racine? We've got other issues. What's going on? It was taking this great canoe paddle from the education center from about a mile upstream to the mouth of the river and back again with the provost Terry Brown where we were discussing everything from what educational opportunities were for students and faculty to engage in a process like this. So, the idea of what a great public university can do to address issues of the day, be them penny legislative issues or big issues facing our state, whether it's healthcare reform or affordable childcare or growing the economy or how do we face the great challenges of tomorrow, are still there and still very possible to address. The other thing I want to say about the Wisconsin Idea is when people talk about it now and look at the legacy, they say that's all left wing social policy, and we can't have the university tied up in left wing social policy. But in its day it was not viewed that way at all. In fact, it was viewed as the great thing to stop socialism from taking hold in the state of Wisconsin. It was nonpartisan and it was pragmatic. The university leaders of the time really viewed it as we figured out how to use science and economics to figure out how to do great things with buttermilk and how to do great things with agriculture, some things with industrial efficient, why too should we not be addressing the very complex issues that affect the state to the legislature? The other thing that was so incredible about the policies is there were other states that were trying to address these issues. Wisconsin was the first place that was really smart about it. Teddy Roosevelt says in his foreword to the book Wisconsin Idea, he said, "As soon as they," McCarthy and his colleagues, "decided that an object was desirable, they at once set upon to work practically to study how to develop the constructive machinery through which it could be achieved. 

This was not an easy attitude to maintain." In other words, what made our ideas so brilliant was that they worked so well functionally in the real world. It was smart public policy. Not left policy, not right policy, smart, effective policy that could be achieved through real means. And this came up in two different ways. There were other states who had tried things that had failed. The other thing that states were encountering is they were trying to develop these programs and the courts kept declaring them unconstitutional. So McCarthy used this scholarship not only to write effective, pragmatic programs, but he also got them through the court system as well. So it was viewed as this great enormous achievement. It did have an egalitarian moral ethic but not a partisan one. The idea was is that the public university should drive policy in the public interest for the betterment of all Wisconsin citizens. 

So it does have that moral view from that point of view, but not at all a partisan one. In fact, McCarthy, who is viewed by many as a lion of the left, actually ran in a primary for the US Senate against Bob La Follette because he was so mad about his antiwar policy against Germany when World War I ran around. So these really were a diverse group of people who were using the best information they had possible to encounter the state's problems. And so when we talk about public access and what the university is and what it means to have a public university in the public interest, I would encourage you and hopefully maybe even inspire you to think beyond just giving a lot more citizens access to this great university system, but also how to reemerge with University of Wisconsin as not just the greatest university for what it does for its graduates, but making it the greatest university once again because of what it does for the state. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] >> You can sit or you can stand. Whatever you'd like. >> Well, it's sort of interesting to follow Cory because in my rereading about the Wisconsin Idea, one thing that came down was that there were sort of two views of it, and one was sort of a public policy view, and one was more of a service to people and institutions of the state. And Cory sort of talked about the first, and I'm going to sort of talk a little bit about the second. And, believe it or not, we didn't talk at all before we came. 

It's really good to be here. For those of you that aren't aware, there's really some great people in this room. You have a Regent here, if you're not aware of it, Tim Higgins. And you have, really, one of the lions of government and in higher education in Wisconsin, Don Percy. So it's really great to see them. One of the problems in thinking about the Wisconsin Idea is that nobody, probably even then, could agree entirely on what it was meant to be. And I went back and started reading various people's pieces, and I forgotten that my father had written a thesis 40 years ago on the Wisconsin Idea. [LAUGHTER] But there's a lot of good stuff in the Wisconsin History magazine and some of the stuff the State Historical Society did, and it's only fitting that the Blue Book that Cory mentions had a wonderful long piece on the Wisconsin Idea by Jack Stark back in the mid-'90s. And then the other things I was thinking about as I tried to prepare for this is one was David Wertz's dissertation in '06 that he did in what was then the ed admin department because he found some really interesting and provocative things that we need to hear. And I also thought that Katherine Cramer Walsh's paper that's just come out where she was interviewing small groups around the state, and their perceptions of the university was fairly telling as well. 

But the way I'm going to look at the Wisconsin Idea is a little bit different than Cory, and I'm not going to diss or in any way suggest that the public policy component isn't there, it obviously was. But what Jack Stark argued in his history of the Wisconsin Idea was that it's the second focus, the focus on the university and its expertise, the research serving the state and the people of the state that I think is even more fundamental, and the more I thought about this, I think it has a lot to do with why the university is in some of the funding problems it is because it sort of forgot that component of the Wisconsin Idea. So, what are some things the Wisconsin Idea is not? It's not the sifting and winnowing plaque, although I love the sifting and winnowing plaque, and being a native of Madison used to run around campus when I was six and seven years old. It's not just the political and policy reforms of the teens and the early 1900s, although that's part of it. And, surprisingly, and this may be a little unpopular, it's not really about students. And Van Hise, who was to some degree could credit as the father of the Wisconsin Idea, although there were precursors, said that a very large fraction of the work of the university is done not for the students who are here but for the 2.5 million people of the state. And I think that captures pretty much the way I think about the Wisconsin Idea. Now, more recently people have said it's the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state, and I think that's sort of a nice cliche, but I really think it's about using the human capital, the expertise, the research capacity of the campus to directly contribute to the betterment of people's lives in this state. And Cory mentioned some of the great Wisconsin Idea examples, butterfat and so forth. There was some research early on on cabbage disease, for instance. 

But it had to do with building a partnership between the people and the university of the state. And I love this quote from Jack Stark because it says something about the university's current problems. The professor building on what the farmer already knew was fundamental in an effective partnership and explains why farmers would travel to Madison to support university research. I don't think you see that much anymore. And a successor to Van Hise, President Adams, nowhere else have the masses of the people received so much direct assistance from the teaching force at the university. So I really want to think about the Wisconsin idea as really the university in a very practical way serving the people of the state. And I'm going to get in trouble here by probably saying some things I shouldn't. I'll reassure you I love Wisconsin. Cory and I share something. I'm a sixth generation Wisconsinite, although they were farmers in Jefferson County, but probably both from New England by the nature of your name. 

I don't know. And Camp Randall was where my great-grandfather was mustered out of the Civil War battalions in 1865. My grandfather taught here. My father taught here. My mother was a staff member here. Most of my degrees, the important ones, are from here. And my wife was a UW system VP for 14 years. So I do love the state and I do love the university, but I think for a long time people have started to realize that we need to get the Wisconsin Idea back in our heads. John Weaver was the first president of the UW system. And in 1972 he said to the Regents that is it not timely, indeed prerequisite, that one begin reexamination and rededication as well to the public service role of these universities? Should we not, with zeal, seek a revitalization of the Wisconsin Idea? And that was 1972. 

So that's 40 years ago. A veteran faculty member and administrator Bryant Kearl gave a speech in the early '90s, Who Killed the Wisconsin Idea? And it was meant to be a provocative title, but he really was talking about how the idea had faded. Jack Stark, in his history, '95, the big question for him is, has the idea faded? And his intuition was that the idea was much stronger in an earlier era than it is now. And then, finally, just some recent research, both from David Wertz's dissertation and from the Cramer piece. David was studying Ohio State, Wisconsin, and the University of Georgia and trying to get some insights both qualitatively and quantitatively into how they were engaging in relating to the public. And so he went to people on campus, and he interviewed them, and he finds that at the UW the virtue of the Wisconsin Idea is ultimately a low priority and the century old concept has lost its flare. So there's a problem here. The legislature, talked to people there, the legislature used to know faculty. Now they don't know anybody, he says. The university used play a serious role in helping state policy; now it's not the case. 

And then, finally, this is him writing in his dissertation, there's a growing concern that the UW has become increasingly national and international. And when you read the UW Madison website about the Wisconsin Idea, that's not altogether surprising because they talk about the university's research and contribution to the state but then they immediately add to the nation and to the global. And that's fine. Make contributions to the nation and the betterment of the world, but let's not forget that what the Wisconsin Idea was was about benefiting the state. I thought David's findings in terms of how Georgia, as opposed to Wisconsin, went about engaging the public was really interesting. Because what he found, and the problem with Wisconsin often is there's so many of us here that are natives. We don't tend to leave. We have a very high percentage of people that stay here. So we're sort of smug, and we sort of think we do things better than maybe than other states, when in reality that may not be the case. There are other states that are making real strides that we don't think about in terms of K-12 education, in terms of higher ed. 

There's a lot of investments being made in states that you wouldn't think. But what he found was that Georgia was spending significantly more on public service and outreach. And what he found was that not only that but the university was much more structured to focus on that effort in the way it was organized. Almost like having case managers working on public engagement, and he saw that at Ohio State and at Wisconsin it was really sort of haphazard and decentralized. And I had to think back a little bit to earlier in my life when my father was on the Extension faculty, and I remember him talking about a reorganization then, and I think there was one some time in the '90s and Jack Stark is talking about one in the '60s. And of course we had this PR stunt in the last couple years, and that's what it was where they system decided to say we're efficient and they put the UW Colleges and Extension together which, maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't', but what it really said was Extension. So what's also really interesting is that in terms of the state administrators and the legislators that he interviewed in Georgia, and I just have to read you these because they're so great. The University of Georgia is seen as having people out in the community. In response to them, the fact is that citizens feel that their lives have been enriched because of the outreach program. And then here's a quote from the state legislator in Georgia, which we'd probably look down our noses at, but what has put a lot of effort into higher ed. 

"I dare not touch the funding for UGA outreach because the folks depend on that expertise." So they're very engaged, the public and the university. And then, finally, the Cramer Walsh research, and I just want to read you a couple things from that. "Many residents of Wisconsin perceive that their state's flagship university was inattentive and inaccessible." There was general agreement that the university was excellent but was mainly inattentive to the concerns and needs of people like themselves. And this is the one that really blew me away because it says their concept of what the university might have once been with the Wisconsin Idea doesn't even exist anymore in their minds. She wrote, "Many members of the public do not expect a close relationship between public universities and residents of the state at large. They do not readily think of UW Madison as a resource for all the people of the state." So, as I get to, let me share a couple other anecdotal things which sort of confirm this research. And, again, I really do have affection for the state, but I think back to the time that I wanted to get a master's degree in business. I was working in a Wisconsin agribusiness, and I wanted to get an MBA at Wisconsin. My father was a Business School professor. And I said to him, I can't work on a graduate degree here. 

They don't have programs for evening students or weekend students or executive students. So what did I do? I went to the University of Chicago which had evening and weekend and daytime on-campus programs. It was all seamless, same faculty, same courses, and a lot more Nobel Prize winners than UW Madison Business School, I might add. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Pardon? And another thing, and this is going to hit a little closer to home for use of those of you in the ed school, I had a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy organization. We've been around for 80 years. Our mission is to do research on state and local government and share that information with the public and the media, with school groups. We published a textbook and some other things. I speak to the state superintendents conference every year. I'm sort of the lead-off speaker. Somehow they haven't figured out that they don't want me. 

I also speak to a lot of regional superintendents meetings through CESAs and speak a fair amount at School Board Association training sessions and so forth. I got to tell you, I never see anybody from the university, from the ed school. I can think of one exception, but that's about it. Fourteen years as a private college trustee and with a wife as a higher ed administrator, I had a long interest in higher ed and higher ed admin, and that had something to do with me getting a PhD fairly late in life. So I started watching higher ed leadership in Wisconsin, and it's sort of disturbing when you think about it. And I'm not directing this at Madison so much as the comprehensive campuses. But there are revolving doors. There are chancellors coming and going from those campuses all the time. Just yesterday we learned that the UW Eau Claire chancellor is leaving for a private college in Utah. And I thought he just got here. 

Maybe it's been four, five, six years. But we don't train, encourage, promote from within. And who would be the chancellors that would provide the leadership to reengage with the public that people that had some connection to the state. We import these people from all over the place. Go look at their bios. Alabama, Washington state, everywhere except here, and they come and go regularly. The one exception is Chuck Sorensen at Stout, and he does a fantastic job. And he gets Wisconsin. But you can't expect a chancellor that comes from somewhere else and then leaves in a few years to know anything about the history and the culture, the ethnicity or anything else about the state. So how can you expect them to engage the public? I've already sort of given my diatribe about UW Extension, and that's the one thing that was clearly the Wisconsin Idea in terms of being involve in community development, in agriculture, and they're still doing that, and they're still doing a pretty good job despite being treated like stepchildren. 

And as far as reengaging the public and trying to promote whatever the Wisconsin Idea is, I've got to tell you, I don't think the university system gets it at all. You look at the website, you look at the press releases, it's all about marketing. It's not about engaging. It's about marketing so we'll convince you to give us more money. So it's grassroots politically organizing the Badger Action Network. And by the way, my wife is responsible for some of this. So I'm hitting pretty close to home. Economic summits a few years ago. It was more about getting the business community to think well of the university than to really get engaged in the economic life of the state. The growth agenda is a perfect example, and I have to say, students can see through it. 

I've been teaching a graduate course in the ed school the last three years, and I had a woman come up to me in class last semester, it was a course on politics and education, and she said to me, who are they kidding? Growth agenda? So we're going to educate accountants and engineers and computer scientists who are really good people and who can command pretty good salaries and they're going to graduate and find out they can't find jobs in Wisconsin so they leave. And regardless of what the Alumni Association or the campus says, that's going on, gang. We've done a lot of research on that, and it clearly shows that we've got a fairly large brain drain. So, enough said. I really believe in the Wisconsin Idea. I really believe in the power of the university to reengage with the people and institutions of the state. State government, yes, but more. And I think there are all sorts of issues that we could look at. There's a real need to understand job creation in this state. And, with apologies to Cory, neither side of the aisle in the legislature gets it. 

Yet, there's all sorts of research out there that says what works, and what doesn't work and it has a lot to do with young firm creation. Another idea, school districts across northern Wisconsin have been bleeding children for 20 years. The K-12 population in Wisconsin has been declining since 1998. Sixty percent of the school districts in the state are losing kids. Part of that is demography. The end of the baby book echo, but that is huge across northern Wisconsin and in the rural southwest. Those folks are, they're just thinning out. And helping these rural areas think about how to reinvent themselves and stay viable is really important. A piece of research the UW could do, but we did it instead by the way, was to look at rural schools and what's going on in rural school districts and how they're fairing. And there's a lot more that could be done on that in terms of looking for models that will make rural school districts viable. 

Because you can't run the old model, the old building teacher in the classroom model is not going to work for them. So somebody better come up with some other ways to do education. MPS, whatever you feel about it, it ain't working. We did a major consulting project on MPS a few years back, and had they not continued to cut and layoff and so forth, we predicted they would be bankrupt by last year when we did the study. And they're teetering on the edge. To think about how to reorganize the place, restructure it, it can't be just money because they're spending more money than the average school district in this by a reasonable margin. They've got a lot of other problems, yes, but somebody needs to help the legislature and Milwaukee and the Governor think about how to educate disadvantaged children in Milwaukee. There are municipalities in school districts in this state that are on the verge of bankruptcy. We have no municipal bankruptcy law. So what happens when MPS or Milwaukee County go belly-up? Well, it's going to come out of the university's hide and all of our hides. 

We're going to cover the bills. Medicaid is going to eat everybody's socks. It already ate everybody's socks in the last budget. If you look at the increase in Medicaid funding, it will line up really nicely with the cuts in almost every other program. >> Except transportation. >> Well, yeah, but there was a small little general fund transfer, but even transportation didn't fair to any great sense. So the university could really help the state think about the way to deliver Medicaid services in ways that save some money because if we don't, the money's going to keep coming out of K-12 education, higher ed, technical schools, everything else. So, I'll leave it at that. I guess what I'm pleading for the original Wisconsin Idea is I think the early proponents defined it, which was really service to the people in the state in very practical ways. And I don't want to leave you on a negative note because there is a lot of good stuff going on out there. 

Now, it tends to be in the more traditional places, but my daughter's going to finish a degree in the Ag school, going back to her heritage five or six generations I guess, and it's interesting to hear her talk about the work that's being done on potatoes, huge in central Wisconsin, cranberries, huge. In fact, she and a classmate went out and interviewed somebody that's experimenting with growing chokecherries. And you don't think of them as really edible, but it turns out that what this project is all about is finding indigenous Wisconsin food materials, crops, whatever, that we can leverage to make money off of and create new agricultural opportunities. So there are good things going on. But I'll leave it at that, and I guess we're going to have time for the other two panelists to tells us... [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] >> Hi. My name is Allie Gardner. I'm actually going to stay seated instead of standing up. But, as was said before, I am from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. I was born here in Madison. 

I'm the only person in my family from Wisconsin, and the only person to attend UW Madison in my family. And it was interesting to hear that Todd mentioned that people from Wisconsin think that they do everything better than the rest of the states because that causes some family controversy sometimes since I'm the only one from here. But I'm really excited to get to talk about this topic, especially as a student. I think sometimes, more often than not, we're left out of these conversations, and I think it's really important. Although there might be disagreement about the role that students play in the Wisconsin Idea, I think no matter what it's very clear that we are going to be the future actors of it on our campus and off. So I want to touch a little bit on that and I also want to respond to the idea of the research that benefits all Wisconsinites and how that is and is not different from the public policy discussion that we have when we talk about the history of the Wisconsin Idea. And then, also, start to give my explanation on why I think, what was said early, the loss of flare for the Wisconsin Idea, why I think that's happened. I want to touch on that a little bit. But I want to start by explaining my experience as a student coming to this campus for the first time, having a tour, walking up Bascom and all that. And they tell you about the Wisconsin Idea, and they use the quote, "The boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state." And then they start talking about study abroad and volunteerism and philanthropy. 

And so that is the first thing  that I heard coming here, and then when I went to student organization kick-offs and we had administrators come and speak at them, that is the same sort of rhetoric that what you learn here you take to Peru and China and Bolivia and you spread it across, which I think are great things, and I think activism and charity and volunteerism are strong here, but the context of that being a part of the Wisconsin Idea is a strange myth, and it's one that we start with coming in as freshman that I think needs to be demystified. I also did some of my own homework and research on the history of the Wisconsin Idea with a woman who has put together this set of CliffsNotes on the Wisconsin Idea. It's about 12 pages, and she's currently sharing it around campus and doing these small sort of discussion groups on it. So it was pretty interesting to me. I didn't know any of that and wasn't taught any of that when I came here, but definitely was taught that we sent a lot of people into the Peace Corps, which is great. I think that's great. But I think it's sort of starting us off with a misrepresentation of our mission and confusing our service to this state and what the Wisconsin Idea historically is and is supposed to be with this idea of global service and global competition and a focus on the international community, which, again, I think is really important and has become a focus but, again, is particularly controversial or contradictory to the Wisconsin Idea in my own opinion. And this sort of attempt to change the mission while still using the branding of the Wisconsin Idea and the boundary idea isn't really working and is incredibly confusing, I think, and is confusing a lot of undergrads and probably graduate students too. Going back to some of the research that I did with this woman, her name is Gwen Drury and she works in the Community and Academic Partnership, I believe is what it's called, in University Health Services. What she said, she explained it as it's not the Wisconsin Idea, it's the Wisconsin Idea and trying to emphasize that this was about Wisconsin, not that we take these ideas that we learn in Wisconsin and go spread them elsewhere and kind of develop them elsewhere. 

But the whole point was that we have these distinctions in Wisconsin of resources, of expertise and of needs and of different problems that we have here, and that trying to find the solutions to those problems and using the expertise and innovation and resources of our own state is what the Wisconsin Idea is actually about, not about us kind of leaving elsewhere. And that the Wisconsin Idea was developed in a time when we had all of these really serious social, economic, and political crises happening at one time and that there was mass corruption that everyone agreed was happening. They didn't know who was influencing who. The public felt completely disconnected to what was going on, and they saw and intense need for transparency and change. And that this type of change that was necessary was going to be huge, and it wasn't going to be easy at all for anyone. And I think that, also talking about that relationship between the state and the university for research, for innovation, for expertise, was critical for directly benefiting the entire state, and also for that focus on transparency. And the idea that those that were setting the agenda in our government at the time, people didn't feel comfortable with, but the idea that the university had a different agenda and that that agenda was based in discovery of truth and in transparency and in this sifting and winnowing idea, people felt more comfortable with than this agenda that was set by people who were influential at the time. I think some of the most clear examples would be some of the dual appointments where professors were also mayors, professors were also advisers to governors and also served as directors of state agencies. Some of the policies and practices that have already been brought up, like the creation of income tax, when we first started to see environmentalism, and when we first started to see public health laws, child labor laws, development of recalls, in general, and then becoming the first place in the world that developed unemployment insurance. All of those things came out of that time, and there was also a policy or a law put into place that said that the capital, the state capital always had to have a university in it. 

And that's when we saw, even geographically, our Capitol faces Bascom. So there was a really clear line of that connection and a need for the sort of information and expertise that the university can provide to legislators and to policymakers to improve people's lives. And I think it was brought up, the role of students at this time, historically, this wasn't about students, but as people who now, more and more, are really heavily involved in the research of the university, we are current actors and we are also future actors and people that will be carrying out the Wisconsin Idea on this campus and also around this state. One other thing that I think was also pointed out a little bit was how controversial some of these policies or all of these policies were at the time. And I think that's incredibly important to focus on. Claims that this was acts of socialism and that these major changes people weren't ready for, but at the same time you had Charles McCarthy saying that nothing was going to prevent class war more than opening the doors of opportunity to the people of Wisconsin. And this promoted this idea of access to higher education, access to the university, and that that's what's going to keep us from having bad things happen in these times of huge changes. That it was going to be incredibly difficult for the entire state to be in agreement when we were having these huge changes that were going against these economic, political, and social crises. And I think what started to interest me also was I haven't read too much about, or even heard people talk too much about, what public perception was like at that time because we know we hear about Bob La Follette, we hear about Van Hise and how they worked together and how their leadership meant so much to the Wisconsin Idea and that likely some of these things may not have happened without their leadership. But I'm wondering if the same sense of elitism that we've read about in Kathy Cramer Walsh's pieces, or that we talk about sometimes that we know about, was still there because it was people that represented the university and people that were in elected positions and that they were distinct from other people. 

So that really interests me to see if there was a similar public perception of elitism back then as there is now, and if the difference is about leadership rather than public perception, though I think that's an important component as well. And in thinking about some of the examples today, if we think about dual appointments, I think we still have some professors that work in state agencies like the Department of Health or something like that. We have community projects on campus. We have something called the Science Shop, which was just opened a week ago, and they try to focus on providing research to community projects. We have a Community Academic Partnership, I think it's called, which I mentioned earlier. But I think what we're missing sometimes is a willingness to go towards those more controversial issues that are social or economic or political or whatever you want to call them. We don't have a lot of the experts really willing to talk about and work on the controversial issues that are affecting our state like healthcare or unemployment or student loan debt, any of those things, and I know that, historically, we used to be a mining state, and it was professors involvement and the university's involvement that made us the cheese state. And so it's big, drastic changes like that, I'm sure at the time were incredibly controversial. I'm sure having unemployment compensation at the time was incredibly controversial, but now it's normal and we state those as some of the most progressive and incremental parts of our history. But now there's this sense of fear, it seems, on campus to talk about those controversial issues. 

They're too political. And I think, we talk about educational innovation on campus, that's been a huge thing, but we don't talk about state innovation and I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if that's something that we're not allowed to touch, we're not allowed to talk about. I know being a student who's gone to my professors and my TAs before and asked if I can make a class announcement, and usually it's on issues that pertain to student government, it's not about partisan type of work or whatever people want to call it, but they'll say I don't know if I can let you make that announcement because it's too political, or I don't know if I can have you send out that email because I'm not allowed to get too political in my department, or if I've made phone calls, things like that. There's this real fear on campus, and this goes back to what I was saying about why I think there's this loss of flare on the Wisconsin Idea, and I think the fear also stems from the fact that we lack support an a sense of unity. The chancellor, earlier, talked about our culture of individualism and that there's a lack of teamwork and that that prevents sometimes from the educational innovation that's necessary, but I think it also prevents us from feeling like we can talk about these controversial issues that are affecting us as citizens of this state. We who work in the university and go to school here, we are also citizens of this state. So we're effected by these things directly. And then we also have the resources here and the expertise here to actually work on those issues, but we're told not to, or there's this sense that you don't talk about that, that you don't bring that up. And I think that's why we moved from explaining the Wisconsin Idea for what it was and moved to more a sense of stewardship, philanthropy, volunteerism because those things are something everyone can get on board with and they don't make people uncomfortable for whatever reason. 

And I think that fear creates a lack of motivation and a lack of activation in students and in other governance groups as well on campus. We lack the unity. We don't feel like there's support in place, and we also don't have the leaders. I think what was mentioned by Todd early is incredibly important. Leadership is really important here. We need more Bascoms, La Follettes. We don't have those in our generation, and also some other non-male, non-white leaders. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> What was that? >> We have Cory. [LAUGHTER] >> Leaders as well. But I'm wondering if we are developing those sorts of leaders here, if we are teaching people to question to attack those controversial issues, to do the sifting and winnowing that we harp on, it's not just a plaque but are we actually practicing that and are we doing that so that we're creating leaders in our students and in our faculty and in our staff too to be able to take on chancellor positions or whatever other leadership positions that are going to activate and motivate our communities and activate and motivate our governance groups on campus to start working on those more controversial issues. 

I think that also ties into our disability to advocate properly because we don't have support and we don't have leaders and we aren't activated and we're not working on those controversial issues. So I think that inhibits us from doing the type of advocacy work that we need to do for the university, and instead we focus on this global focus or this global competition and that sort of market rather than what does this state actually need right now? How do we use these resources to help this state and how are we not afraid to use them to help this state even on controversial matters? That's all. [APPLAUSE] >> Okay, is it on? Yes, okay, it's on. I'm going to round out this panel, and I'm not going to talk for very long. I want to first say that I think I'm going to, as a fairly controversial person I believe, take the chance to actually say that I remarkably agree with much of what's been said here, both with Todd and with Cory, and then I sort of strongly disagree with some things that they each said. Here's a little bit of what I agree with. We have taken a turn at some point, I don't know when. I have only been here eight years. I've learned, in no short order, that that's not very long in this place. I came here from Virginia, a place where I don't think the universities do much for the state at all. 

The place has very little sense of community, and we have no connection to UVA. The only people who have connection to UVA are the people at UVA. I think that the rhetoric here has been about the value of the degree that we offer in monetary terms. That we spend a ton of time showing you that education pays off and showing you that chart over and over again. That the degree is valuable, that it has payback, and that it's worth it. That you should go into debt for it, that you should buy it at all costs, and that that's why you should come here. That's an incredibly individualizing way to think about what we're doing at this university, and it's no wonder that we've become incredibly individualized, at the administration level, at the faculty level, at the student level. Everybody's in it for themselves, and everybody's out to become the best superstar they can be. We're going to lose on that proposition. We're going to lose relative to those that we want to be competitive with. 

We're going to lose because we're not in control of the economy We're going to lose because if we're interested in a quality of opportunity at all, inevitably at some point, that premium to the bachelor's degree is going to start to decline because more and more people get it, and so there isn't going to be such a premium. And then we're going to get upset. Then we're going to start pushing on our graduate programs. The way to win here is through the notion that we are generating something here that is a collective good, and that's knowledge, and that's discussion, and it's what you're doing in the room. It's the idea that people come and exchange ideas about how to make the world better and that we go out and then we implement them. The problem is that, A, we don't claim that, we don't say it loud enough, and it's hard to measure. So we need to prove that once you've come to any of our universities or any of our two-year colleges, that you leave somehow changed in a way other than that you carry a piece of paper that your employer thinks means you learned something. That's what we fail to demonstrate. That's what we don't show to the legislature. They want us to have skills. 

I realize that there are lots of varied and different people within the legislature, so I actually don't want to talk about them like one body. But we haven't made that case. We haven't made that case. Cory's absolutely right. And the lack of sense of a collective is why people get so upset about their individual compensation and don't talk about what's actually happened to moral around here. We're upset about salaries and we turn to other individuals, to students, to solve those problems, rather than saying our entire unified front has eroded, and that's really what's a shame. So I agree with you on that. And I agree with Todd that we don't have nearly enough scholar activists on this campus taking the work that they do in their offices to the streets. I won't agree with you, though, that it's not happening. I happen to know, I'm going to use my own department just because I'm proud of my department, Doug Harris, one of my colleagues who we unfortunately are going to be losing, has been spending a lot of time at the Department of Public Instruction and in Milwaukee trying to help Milwaukee Public Schools. 

I've been to a few events around the state myself and spend a heck of a lot of time worrying about the rest of the state. My colleague, Gloria Ladson-Billings does so. Harry does so. Mike Olneck does so. There's a huge number of ways in which we're out there all the time doing that kind of work. Is it exactly the kind of work that you hope to see or agree with politically? I don't know. But I think what's important is that we do leave our offices, and we do tell students that it's important to leave this campus and to go out elsewhere. You need to know that we get repercussions for that. And I think Allie's starting to call it back. I know it very, very well what happens when someone takes on a controversial issue in this state. 

You get told that you are being political. You get told that it's inappropriate to speak out as a professor at this institution and to have an attitude or particular opinion. You get questioned as to whether you're supposed to be protesting. It doesn't become a Badger to get arrested publicly protesting. Actually, I think that's the definition of a Badger. Whenever that changed, that's when we lost it because going out and taking what you know from your learnings and your classes and taking what you know from your research to the streets, to the people of the state, that's what we're supposed to be doing here. The one other thing I want to raise is that there is an unfortunate attitude, and it is inculcated from the moment that students set foot on this campus and from the moment that faculty get here, that we are to be internationally recognized. And you don't get internationally recognized by  focusing on the issues of Stout and Racine and etc. n fact, if you study Wisconsin, and I know this very well, you're told, wow, you're studying that very white and very Midwestern state, and it has nothing to do with the rest of the nation, and it's hard to get famous doing that. So that's a problem. But we're going to have to find other incentives to insure that the faculty and the students do focus on the issues of the state, and we're going to need a lot more than a bus tour around the state, one that I'm happy to be going on this year but that I understand isn't even taking me that far north, and then I'm afraid we're going to sort of be on a tour. 

Look at the UW Madison professors, aren't they cute? [LAUGHTER] I'm not cute. I have controversial ideas, and  I really hope that we get off the bus and really, really talk to people about the way that Kathy has about what they think of us and why they think that. Some of it's true. A lot of it's not. But nobody's going to fix this for us. It's on us to do it. So thank you. [APPLAUSE]