A decade after Wisconsin GOP bill, UW system could see mass layoffs of tenured staff

The Universities of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents will soon decide whether to lay off more than three dozen tenured professors at UW-Milwaukee.

The proposal, by outgoing Chancellor Mark Mone, also includes eliminating the College of General Studies at UWM. Mone said the moves are necessary because of the “harsh realities” facing higher education institutions, including low enrollment and underfunding from the state Legislature. 

But educators fear moving forward with the proposal will open the door for more tenured faculty to lose their jobs. 

“It’s a big deal obviously for the individuals affected, but it will fundamentally alter tenure in the state,” said Tait Szabo, a tenured associate philosophy professor in the College of General Studies.

“I mean, it’s an attack on public higher education in the state and diminishing tenure protections as strongly as this would continue the assault on higher education and really diminishes what the state can offer to its communities.”

Szabo studied philosophy at Cornell University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007. He said he spent 15 years working to get tenure, which he obtained in 2014.

Now, 47 with a wife and child, Szabo said if he loses his job at UWM, he will probably have to change professions. He said his family’s life is rooted in the area and professor positions are hard to come by.

For decades, tenure has been a coveted status for professors that meant job security and academic freedom. But under former Gov. Scott Walker, tenure protections from state law were stripped in 2015. 

The Board of Regents replaced the law the following year, adding program elimination as a reason to lay off tenured faculty. That is how Mone is justifying these layoffs. 

Since 2016, only one tenured professor has been laid off. That was in 2019, when UW-Platteville discontinued an early childhood program. 

UWM absorbed the Washington County and Waukesha two-year campuses in 2018. At that time, the university created the College of General Studies.

The Washington County campus in West Bend closed at the end of this school year. The Waukesha campus will close in May 2025. 

In a letter sent Aug. 12 to UW system President Jay Rothman, Mone said there has been a 57 percent decline in enrollments at both campuses since the 2018 merger and poor prospects for continued and future enrollments. 

Because of that drop, the liberal arts associate degrees offered are “no longer cost effective,” Mone says. 

“UWM does not make this recommendation lightly, especially given the effect on (College of General Studies) staff and students and the communities served by CGS,” Mone wrote. “It is, however, the necessary and appropriate recommendation based on the realities and higher education environment in which we are operating.”

During a meeting earlier this month, the UWM Faculty Senate rejected the proposal in a symbolic vote. 

Faculty argued that UWM did not sufficiently consider all feasible alternatives to layoffs, such as absorbing tenured staff into the main campus and academic departments. 

Mone argues UWM’s main campus is also facing enrollment drops. He said most of the tenured professors from the College of General Studies would land in the College of Letters & Science, which has seen a 41 percent enrollment drop over the last 10 years and is currently working to close a deficit through staff attrition.  

UWM’s American Association of University Professors chapter sent a letter to Mone earlier this month telling him the closure of branch campuses in Washington and Waukesha counties was already causing serious harm. 

“The shutdown of the physical facilities ordered by the system president has been calamitous for academic and university staff, who lack the protections afforded to faculty in regent policy and state law,” the letter states. “The chancellor now has the opportunity to step back from the brink before causing further institutional and reputational damage to UWM.”

The Board of Regents meets Aug. 22 and 23 in Madison. The agenda will not be posted until Monday and system spokesperson Mark Pitsch did not say if the UWM layoffs will be discussed next week. 

Nearly every regent is a Gov. Tony Evers’ appointee. Whether they agree with the Walker Administration’s approach to tenure is unknown. 

Szabo said he understands that outside academia tenure is unpopular. But he said weakening it will hurt recruitment efforts for top talent to Wisconsin’s higher education institutions. 

“We’ve already lost so many opportunities to seek higher education in this state with the closing of rural and suburban campuses,” Szabo said. “It will be really disappointing if the Board of Regents, that is now full of Governor Evers’ appointees, is just a rubber stamp. How demoralizing will that be for higher education?”