Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said in a statement that the state’s universities have become dependent on tuition due to lagging state funding over many years, but the “turnaround” from proposed cuts to the state investing in the budget will help “preserve access and affordability” for students and families. Rothman and UW-Madison Jennifer Mnookin testify in front of the Legislative Audit Committee in April 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The announcement comes just days after the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed a state budget that includes increased investments in the system by over $200 million for operational costs and over $800 million for capital projects. While the increases took a different direction from Republican’s proposed cuts, they are nowhere near the $855 million operational budget increase initially requested by the system last year when Rothman warned that tuition increases would be on the table if there wasn’t significant investment.
Rothman said in a statement that the state’s universities have become dependent on tuition due to lagging state funding over many years, but the “turnaround” from proposed cuts to the state investing in the budget will help “preserve access and affordability” for students and families.
“Preserving quality while maintaining our ability to be a leader on tuition affordability in the Midwest is a top priority,” Rothman said. “After a decade of a tuition freeze and lagging state aid, we believe we have struck a balance for students and families with this proposal and the recent state investments in the UWs as part of the 2025-27 biennial budget.”
Rothman will ask the UW Board of Regents to approve a 4% increase at all campuses for the 2025-26 year.
Individual campuses would also have the option under his proposal of implementing an additional 1% increase. All universities except UW-Green Bay plan to adopt that. UW-River Falls is also seeking to increase its tuition even further by 5.8% to support “ student success initiatives.”
Under the proposal, nonresident undergraduate tuition at each campus would increase by the same percentage or dollar amount.
The system noted that most of the increases approved in the state budget are for specific purposes, including virtual mental health services, wage increases and addressing staff recruitment and retention.
State funding today makes up about a fifth of the UW’s total revenue. The UW system’s 2023-25 biennial budget was $13.7 billion with 58% of that coming from program revenue, 24% from the federal government and 18% from general purpose revenue.
According to the UW system, the average increase when segregated fees and room and board costs are included would be 3.8%.
If approved, the increase will be the third consecutive year of tuition increases for UW since the end of a 10-year tuition freeze in 2023. The system said its tuition increased just 7.7% from 2015 to 2025, below the tuition increases for its peers in other states that had increases ranging from 21.7% to 28.8% over the 10 years.
The UW Board of Regents will consider the plan on July 10.
Here are the proposed resident undergraduate tuition costs for 2025-26 at each campus:
At an April 1 hearing, in a sign of what the most contentious issues will be in this year’s state budget, the Republican-controlled budget committee only heard from two state agencies: Corrections and the Universities of Wisconsin system.
UW system President Jay Rothman told lawmakers he agreed with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ assessment that the 2025-27 biennial state budget is a “make it or break it” budget year for the public university system.
Evers’ budget request for the Universities of Wisconsin matched the agency’s ask of $856 million in additional funding over two years, which would be one of the largest increases in the university system’s history. Evers told reporters this funding, in addition to $1.6 billion proposed for capital projects, is essential even without the Trump administration’s threats to cut university funding.
Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee asked Rothman to justify “administrative bloat” across the system’s 13 universities, as well as the sizable budget ask. Rothman said while the request is large, Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in state spending on public universities. Evers’ budget would add 214 state-funded positions to UW campuses. Rothman said that excluding UW-Madison, the universities have lost over 1,000 positions since 2019.
The share of the UW system budget that comes from state funds has decreased by about 15 percentage points in the last two decades, from 33% to 18%.
“If we get the budget funded, we will not have to raise tuition,” Rothman told the JFC. “If we don’t get funded at an adequate level, that’s one of the levers we have. We keep our branch campuses open, that’s another lever we have that I don’t want to have to use.”
But amid declining birth rates and enrollment in public schools across the state, Republican lawmakers questioned whether the $856 million ask is reasonable considering university enrollments may soon drop significantly. Five of the 13 campuses had enrollments shrink last year.
“You cannot cut your way to success,” Rothman told the committee. “You need to invest.”
State funding for UW-Madison — the state’s flagship university — in inflation-adjusted dollars was $644 million in 1974. Since then, it has declined by $93 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the university’s 2023-24 budget report. Figures aren’t available system-wide.
Republican Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the committee, asked Rothman why the request called for 13 new staff positions — one on each campus — to support students who have aged out of the foster care system. He cited a UW system report that found there were 420 students in that program across nine of the campuses. He questioned why a position would need to be created at a school like UW-Platteville, which served nine of those students last year. The report also shows that the program didn’t serve all 570 students who qualify, including 23 on that campus.
“I think this is a shining example of the governor’s desire to grow government and your desire to grow your system, and it’s not focused on the reality of how you invest in this stuff,” Born told Rothman.
Rothman said the intent behind the positions is to expand the number of foster care students who could be served.
GOP lawmakers critique admissions process
Republican lawmakers have criticized enrollment and admissions at the state’s flagship university in recent years, citing constituents who say their high-achieving children have been rejected from attending UW-Madison. They have also raised concerns that the university is denying admission to in-state students in favor of out-of-state or international students.
Unlike some of the smaller Wisconsin campuses, UW-Madison has maintained high enrollment numbers likely due to its ability to attract out-of-state and international students.
If the university significantly increased its enrollment of in-state students from an already declining pool of applicants, enrollment at other UW system schools could be negatively affected, UW-Madison Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Derek Kindle told WPR.
During the April 1 hearing, Sen. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, said he adamantly believes in retaining Wisconsin-based students in the university system. He asked Rothman why one of his young constituents — who has a 4.3 GPA, 32 ACT score and a father who is a military veteran — was rejected from UW-Madison.
“How are we not serving our own kids, as they graduate, by admitting them to our universities before we spend taxpayer dollars and increase taxpayer dollars to attract people from other parts of the world?” Stafsholt asked.
Rothman said he didn’t have the specifics of that student’s case, but pointed to a bill signed into law last year that allows graduating high school students who rank in the top 10% of their high school’s graduating class to gain admission to any UW system school and guarantees admission to UW-Madison for those in the top 5% of their class. The bill takes effect for college admissions starting next fall.
In fall 2024, UW-Madison admitted around 59.3% of in-state applicants, down from an average of 66.8% over the previous nine years. The out-of-state U.S. student admission rate was 46.5%, and the international student admission rate was 33.3%, compared to a previous nine-year average of 52.7% and 38.6% respectively.
The questioning was similar to a national talking point about high-achieving students being rejected from universities, which some Republicans have attributed to diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Right-wing activists like Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, have questioned whether the government should be funding higher education.
On the same day as the hearing, Kirk took to social media to share an example of a high-achieving student similar to the one Stafsholt spoke of.
“Why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to universities so stupid they won’t offer this kid an admission because of his skin color (and let’s be honest, that’s why he was rejected everywhere)?” Kirk wrote on X. “Defund the college scam.”
Slashes to federal funding loom over UW-Madison
Last month, the federal Department of Education notified UW-Madison that it was one of 60 universities across the country under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. The letter warned that the university could lose federal funding if it failed to protect its Jewish students.
The move was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, which has involved detaining, deporting and terminating the visas of students with ties to the national pro-Palestinian protests last spring.
UW-Madison is also one of 45 universities being investigated for alleged racial discrimination related to its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The Trump administration has made sweeping threats to pull federal funding from colleges that continue to consider race and diversity in their policies and programs.
But how much funding is at stake here?
According to the Associated Press, out of 50 public universities under OCR investigation, UW-Madison is among the top five that received the most federal revenue in 2022-23. The university collected more than $827 million in federal funds that year, which was just over 20% of its total revenue.
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Republican-ordered audits released Friday found that Wisconsin state agencies and the Universities of Wisconsin system have failed to track the millions of dollars they spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, making it difficult to fully assess the initiatives.
The highly anticipated reports come amid a push by President Donald Trump to end federal government support for DEI programs. There have been similar efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans who control the Legislature. The reports’ findings are likely to further increase pressure from Republicans to do away with anything related to DEI.
DEI practices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in particular have come under close scrutiny.
The system’s flagship campus fired its chief diversity officer, LaVar Charleston, in January for what university officials said were poor financial decisions he had made, including approving substantial raises and authorizing what they deemed to be excessive spending on travel.
The school is one of 50 universities across the country that Trump said are under investigation for alleged racial discrimination related to DEI programs. UW-Madison also is one of 60 schools that federal education officials are investigating because of accusations that they failed to protect Jewish students during campus protests last year over the war in Gaza. UW-Madison officials said Friday that they are cooperating with both probes and that they condemn antisemitism in all of its forms.
Audits estimate that millions of dollars went toward DEI activities
The audits found that neither UW nor the 15 state agencies that were reviewed specifically tracked how much money they spent on DEI efforts during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, which ended June 30.
Auditors noted that neither the UW system’s Board of Regents nor its administration required schools to define DEI, which resulted in them launching individualized initiatives. Auditors were able to estimate that the system spent about $40 million on offices with duties connected to DEI. The system spent about $12.5 million on salaries for positions with job duties related to DEI and another $8 million working on DEI-related activities. A dozen state agencies spent about $2.2 million on salaries for jobs related to DEI.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration didn’t consistently require agencies to ensure DEI plans were developed and implemented correctly, the audit found. Also, agencies didn’t consistently document when they corrected noncompliance, the report said.
The administration cautioned about drawing conclusions about the actual costs related to DEI as outlined in the audit.
Many of the costs were related to implementing programs required by law, were human resources best practices or were tied to worker retention and recruitment efforts, said Kathy Blumenfeld, who heads the state’s Department of Administration.
GOP pushes to eliminate DEI programs
Legislative Republicans have been pushing for years to end DEI programs and last year ordered the review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has pledged to end diversity efforts in state government, saying that such initiatives are “cancerous” and that he wants a society that is “truly colorblind.”
State Sen. Eric Wimberger and state Rep. Robert Wittke, Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee, said in a statement Friday that the audits show taxpayers spent millions on DEI with very little to show for it.
Vos said in a statement Friday that Assembly Republicans would keep pushing to eliminate DEI as they deliberate on the 2025-27 state budget.
“Student achievement should be based on merit,” Vos said.
DEI positions shrink at UW
Under a deal reached with Republicans in 2023, the UW system froze diversity hires, re-labeled about 40 diversity positions as “student success” positions and dropped an affirmative action hiring program at UW-Madison. In exchange, the Legislature paid for staff raises and construction projects.
Auditors found that when the deal took effect, the system had at least 123 full-time positions that provided DEI services, had job titles that included the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” or were senior leadership positions focused on DEI. The number of positions had dropped to 110 by May 2024.
There are now 64 positions, UW system President Jay Rothman wrote in response to the auditors. Rothman said the auditors’ work was challenging because there is no universal definition of DEI, each school developed its own initiatives and the offices that perform DEI work also might have duties unrelated to DEI projects, blurring spending lines and funding sources.
“In that context, it is important to emphasize both the UW’s philosophical shift aimed more broadly at student success as well as the variance in which universities structure their offices and positions that may pertain to — though not exclusively focus on — ‘DEI’ activities when one is interpreting the data offered in the report,” Rothman wrote in his letter.
Governor required agencies to create DEI plans
Evers signed an executive order in 2019 requiring each state agency to create and monitor equity and inclusion plans to address employment barriers, assess workplaces to ensure they’re equitable and promote inclusion and expand professional development to encourage a more inclusive culture.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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