Wisconsin Campus Closure Approved; Philosophers & Others To Lose Jobs
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted last week to approve the closer of the Waukesha campus of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Thirty-two professors will be laid off, including three tenured philosophers. They are Timothy Dunn, Dean Kowalski, and Tait Szabo. See this earlier post for background. An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: UW-Milwaukee closed its Washington County campus at the end of the 2023-24 school year, and its Waukesha campus will shutter after the spring 2025 semester. Faculty at the two campuses worked in an academic unit called the College of General Studies. The UW Board of Regents on Thursday eliminated the college, and with it, the professors’ jobs… Board members were apologetic about what they called an “unfortunate situation.” They blamed poor planning and a lack of oversight on the 2018 restructuring project, which placed the branch campuses collectively known as UW Colleges under four-year universities. Enrollment had been declining even before the merger but has accelerated since then. Only one member of the 18-member board voted against the layoffs. The article notes that the layoffs are the result of weakening of tenure protections: Before 2016, if a program was discontinued, faculty with tenure protections had to be placed in a different position if they did not leave on their own accord. Tenured faculty could be laid off only in a campuswide financial emergency or be terminated for just cause. For decades, Wisconsin had some of the strongest tenure protections in the country because they were written into state law. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2015 stripped those protections from state law. They added language into the law giving chancellors clear authority over program decisions, and allowed for tenured faculty to be laid off if an academic program is discontinued. The regents, the majority of whom were Walker appointees, approved the new tenure policy in 2016 despite intense faculty objections. Since then, the board has applied the layoff policy just once, for a single UW-Platteville professor in 2021. The Journal Sentinel article, paywalled, is here. (via Alan White)
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2024-08-26 14:09:35
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"content": "Wisconsin Campus Closure Approved; Philosophers \u0026 Others To Lose Jobs\n\nThe University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted last week to approve the closer of the Waukesha campus of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Thirty-two professors will be laid off, including three tenured philosophers. They are Timothy Dunn, Dean Kowalski, and Tait Szabo. See this earlier post for background. An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: UW-Milwaukee closed its Washington County campus at the end of the 2023-24 school year, and its Waukesha campus will shutter after the spring 2025 semester. Faculty at the two campuses worked in an academic unit called the College of General Studies. The UW Board of Regents on Thursday eliminated the college, and with it, the professors’ jobs… Board members were apologetic about what they called an “unfortunate situation.” They blamed poor planning and a lack of oversight on the 2018 restructuring project, which placed the branch campuses collectively known as UW Colleges under four-year universities. Enrollment had been declining even before the merger but has accelerated since then. Only one member of the 18-member board voted against the layoffs. The article notes that the layoffs are the result of weakening of tenure protections: Before 2016, if a program was discontinued, faculty with tenure protections had to be placed in a different position if they did not leave on their own accord. Tenured faculty could be laid off only in a campuswide financial emergency or be terminated for just cause. For decades, Wisconsin had some of the strongest tenure protections in the country because they were written into state law. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2015 stripped those protections from state law. They added language into the law giving chancellors clear authority over program decisions, and allowed for tenured faculty to be laid off if an academic program is discontinued. The regents, the majority of whom were Walker appointees, approved the new tenure policy in 2016 despite intense faculty objections. Since then, the board has applied the layoff policy just once, for a single UW-Platteville professor in 2021. The Journal Sentinel article, paywalled, is here. (via Alan White)\nThe post https://dailynous.com/2024/08/26/wisconsin-campus-closure-approved-philosophers-others-to-lose-jobs/\n.\n\nhttps://dailynous.com/2024/08/26/wisconsin-campus-closure-approved-philosophers-others-to-lose-jobs/",
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