I wrote about this very significant problem earlier, on December 12, 2024. Due to the application of a new funding allocation formula between UWM schools and colleges, the funding will be decreased by at least three million dollars per year. This will result in layoffs of non-tenured instructors, technical personnel, and graduate Teaching Assistants, increasing teaching load for professors (for the same salary), closing of some programs and departments, and so on.
Recently, a colleague, Prof. Matthew Petering, has written a very compelling text clarifying aspects of the problem and why the current decision is wrong.
“In both of the recent changes to the UWM budget model (which occurred in about 2020 and 2025), the following four colleges/schools came out as big losers.
Engineering
Health Professions and Sciences (i.e., Nursing + Health Sciences)
Public Health
Freshwater Sciences
All this happened because of a change in the budget model, not because of changes in what students or faculty were doing.
1
One flaw in the new budget model is that it awards the same number of points for teaching 1 student credit hour (SCH) of laboratory and 1 SCH of lecture. However, it is clearly more expensive to teach 1 SCH of lab than 1 SCH of lecture. Part of the reason why the above four units are losers in the new budget model is because they have the highest concentration of hands-on laboratory instruction. Given these facts, and given UWM’s desire to prioritize (hands-on) experiential learning, the budget model should be changed to include a factor that every “laboratory SCH” is multiplied by before it is added to the lecture SCHs to arrive at total SCHs taught by each college. This factor should be at least 1.5 for courses that are half lecture + half lab and at least 2 for courses that are 100% lab.
2
The new budget models were created under the assumption that the above four units will get a substantial amount of extra money from indirect costs (ICs) related to research projects. When the new budget models were developed, the IC rates for federal research projects were about 55%. However, that has changed. Now the IC rate for NIH-funded research projects (and most other federally funded projects) is only 15%. This will greatly reduce the research-related funds that will flow to these four units. Given that these changes were not anticipated when the new budget model was adopted, the budget model needs to be revised accordingly.
3
Using student credit hours (SCH) as the predominant factor for allocating funds is unwise. It divides the university into silos, each of which is fighting for every last SCH. Instead of us working with other units to cross-list courses, every unit is now building a wall around itself to protect its SCHs. But everyone knows that an interdisciplinary approach–with fewer walls between disciplines–will be needed for humanity to address the greatest problems of the 21st century.
4
Using student credit hours (SCH) as the predominant factor for allocating funds is unfair. Students who major in (L&S, business, art, architecture, education, and social work) do essentially all of their credit hours within their school or college (except for GERs being taken in L&S). On the other hand, students in (Engineering, Health Professions and Sciences, Public Health, Freshwater Sciences) take a much greater portion of their coursework outside their school/college. In particular, all take science and math courses in L&S, not to mention GER courses in L&S. Thus, the new budget model is rigged against these four units. This is blatantly unfair.
5
By deciding to follow the recommendations of the new budget model no matter what (and to suddenly do so over a mere three years), the UWM administration is essentially taking $5 million away from engineering and giving $6 million in extra funds to business within a three-year period. But business was the only UWM college not under financial strain in the first place. This is not good policy. Rather than giving $6 million extra to the “maxed-out” business school, it would be better to give it back to engineering because engineering is the critical bottleneck discipline which will decide whether Milwaukee’s economy succeeds or not.
Thanks for your help in pushing back against the new budget model.
Cheers,
Matt”
PS. An article on the same topic “Kathleen Gallagher: UWM’s making a big mistake to cut engineering program at critical time” was published in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
article (another version)