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Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Friday, August 08, 2008

Legislators should recognize the value of higher education

By Tribune staff

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has lost a key environmental researcher to the University of Minnesota.

If this was an isolated case, it would be one thing. But this has happened before. And it will happen again as long as salaries for UW campuses do not keep up with peer institutions.

And it will keep up as long as there is wrong-headed anti-university actions taken by legislators from both political parties.

The chairman of the Assembly committee affecting colleges and universities, Republican Steve Nass of Whitewater, often sounds as if he hates the UW system.

And Senate Democrats in the last session refused to allow a plan to expand financial aid to low- and moderate-income students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, even though the same plan had passed the Assembly on an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

Legislators approve budgets that often result in actual reductions in university funding, and then express surprise and anger when the universities try to make up the difference with increased tuition.

And this has an impact.

Prof. Jon Foley, founder and director of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at UW-Madison, has accepted an offer from the University of Minnesota to become the director of a new system-wide environmental institute.

The move will double his salary and amounts to a great opportunity for his career.

But Foley also says that lack of legislative support made a difference.

“It is remarkable how big a difference having a constructive and supportive legislature — even when money is still tight — makes in camus morale and attitude,” Foley said.

We need the university system to help provide a well-educated citizenry and workforce, and to help in the overall economic development of the state.

But we also need legislators who understand that.