A Republican-led state legislative committee approved new teaching requirements for Universities of Wisconsin faculty Thursday, a condition of the bipartisan state budget passed this summer.
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At a time when American politics are increasingly polarized and partisan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a new undergraduate major focused on working across those divides to create evidence-based public policy.
The public policy major, debuting in fall 2026, is the first undergraduate major from the La Follette School of Public Affairs. The Wisconsin Legislature created the school in 1983 to educate future public servants for state and local government. In 2019, after decades of offering only graduate programs, the school added undergraduate certificates — UW-Madison’s version of a minor — in public policy and later in health policy.
Today, they’re among the most popular certificates on campus, said La Follette School Director Susan Webb Yackee. The animosity and gridlock that plague American politics hasn’t discouraged students. In fact, she thinks it’s only made them more interested.
“This could be a time when our young people are running away from our policy problems, but many of them are running toward them,” Yackee said, noting that she’s seen particular interest in policies about health, environment and climate change.
With the new major, those young people will have the option to make public policy their primary focus. School leaders say that it’s the first public policy major in Wisconsin and that it may be the only one in the country focused on teaching students how to engage in civil dialogue and find common ground.
Those are the skills society needs today, Yackee said.
“In a 50-50 state like Wisconsin, in a 50-50 country like the United States, we won’t be able to solve our big public policy problems by simply taking the point of view that one might agree with,” Yackee said. “We will have to work across the political aisle to make real change.”
Yackee spoke to Wisconsin Watch about how she hopes the new program will transform students, campus and the future of policymaking in the United States.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What exactly is public policy, and how is it different from political science?
Public policy is the study of government institutions as well as decision making that affects everyone’s lives. That differs from political science in the sense that we’re interested in not just the politics of how those decisions get made, but also whether public policies that go into effect work or not. Evaluating what works and what doesn’t in existing public policy, as well as predicting what kinds of policies may work and why, is a terrifically important part of our faculty research, as well as the classes that students take….
I’m a political scientist, but most of our faculty at the La Follette School are economists. They’re oftentimes much more focused on … Does that policy work? How is it different than policies in other states? If there’s a policy change, did that change actually match what legislators or practitioners wanted to see happen?
Why did the faculty decide to focus the new curriculum on civil dialogue and finding common ground?
Our mission is evidence-based policymaking, and we quickly identified that to get to our mission, people had to be able to sit down in the same room and talk about it. You have to be able to talk before you can talk about evidence … That was a need we felt we could serve particularly well within our major … That’s also a skill that a lot of our undergraduate students on campus, who might not be public policy majors, could also benefit from.
For some people, this feels like a sort of dismal time for politics or public policy. What are you hearing from students about why they’re interested in public policy and what kinds of problems they want to solve?
It’s absolutely true that politics and our current public policy atmosphere turns off a lot of people right now. But very interestingly, we’re seeing huge student engagement in public policy on campus …
A lot of UW-Madison students are interested in working in the nonprofit sector. Many nonprofits need to be able to evaluate their programs to see if they work or not … We teach classes in: How would we understand the goals of the program? How would we quantify them? … So the kind of skills-based classes that we teach have a lot of translation into other fields beyond just government service.
Do you hear students expressing frustration with politicians today?
I think there’s a lot of frustration with inaction, and I think that’s normal for traditionally aged college students. Is that any different today than it was in the 1970s or the 1950s? They’re impatient for change, and good for them. I am too, and I love their impatience.
Let me give you a concrete example of a class I taught … It was for students to do applied policy analysis with real-world clients. This class happened to have three real-world clients, and they were all sitting Wisconsin legislators…
The first day of class was me saying, “Some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Republican (client), and some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Democrat … and if that’s a problem for you in this class, then you ought not to take it, because we are going to provide the best nonpartisan analysis that we can possibly provide to these elected members so that they can make the best decisions they can make for our state.”
It was sort of like a pin drop when I said that. Nobody dropped the class. Those students did a fabulous job … A lot of those students were bio majors or chem majors — they weren’t political science majors. They did these reports on these topics, and some of them have now been passed into state law. So they were part of the ecosystem which created real change.
The students … (also) testified in one of the Senate committee rooms in the Wisconsin Legislature… They presented. They were asked questions. Afterwards, one of the students came up to grab me and said, “Dr. Yackee, this is the professional thrill of my lifetime” …
That class is sort of a nutshell of what we’re hoping to accomplish in this undergraduate major.
What do we know about how to promote civil dialogue and find common ground and about how to teach people to do that?
One of the things that we know about teaching classes on talking across the political divide is the importance of establishing ground rules in terms of how those conversations are going to take place. One of our current faculty members, Associate Professor Amber Wichowsky, very much emphasizes curiosity. One of the ground rules for her classes is you need to be curious about how and why people feel differently than yourself …
It’s innate human behavior to put people in different camps of “us” and “them” … If we come into conversations with that framing, we will not be successful. If we come in with a framing of curiosity and an openness to new perspectives and ideas — it is not that we’re looking to change people’s values, but we are looking to humanize the other because that is one step toward being able to listen to other people’s points of view and work across the political divide.
Free speech on campus is a hot topic these days. How do you hope the major and the skills that you’re providing students might create the kind of environment that you’d like to see on campus?
Great question. I think of it like my bicep: I don’t work out as much as I should, but the more I work out that muscle, the stronger it gets. I think we don’t have enough opportunities for students to engage with people that are different than them and think differently than them.
Let me submit that a university is a place of ideas, so the most important kind of diversity is the diversity of ideas. It should be a fundamental job of ours to encourage those interactions … We’re going to do that in our classes, but we’re also going to do that by hosting politicians and practitioners and journalists that have different points of view. We’ve done that now for years, and we will continue to do that.
So if this major is successful, how do you picture the campus will be different?
We hope that it would provide an outlet for students who are interested in applied politics and policy and careers in that space to have a fuller and richer UW-Madison educational experience …
If we can position students with (these) skills … and they can be trained and ready to go when our country arguably needs them more than ever, then we will have done our job as educators, but we’ll also have done our job in promoting the Wisconsin Idea in a really important way.
Have a question about jobs or job training in Wisconsin? Or want to tell a reporter about your struggle to find the right job or the right workers? Email reporter Natalie Yahr, nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, or call or text her at 608-616-0752.
Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus.
New UW-Madison major will teach students to bridge partisan divides is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
After a year of budget cuts, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said existing funds and growing private and philanthropic support will fund the new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
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The College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence was approved on Thursday by the Board of Regents.
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It’s fourth period in the auto lab at Madison’s Vel Phillips Memorial High School, and a dozen students maneuver between nearly as many cars.
At one bay, a junior adjusts the valves of an oxygen-acetylene torch and holds the flame to a suspended Subaru’s front axle to loosen its rusty bolts. Steps away, two classmates tease each other in Spanish as they finish replacing the brakes on a red Saab. Teacher Miles Tokheim moves calmly through the shop, checking students’ work and offering pointers.
After extensive renovations, the lab reopened last year with more room and tools for young mechanics-in-training. What visitors can’t see is the class recently got an upgrade, too: college credit.
Through a process called dual enrollment, high schoolers who pass the course now earn five Madison College credits for free and skip the class if they later enroll. Classes like these are increasingly common in Wisconsin and across the country. That’s allowed more high schoolers to earn college credit, reducing their education costs and giving them a head start on their career goals.
Wisconsin lawmakers and education officials want more high schoolers to have this opportunity. But these classes need teachers with the qualifications of college instructors, and those teachers are in short supply.
That leaves many students — disproportionately, those in less-affluent areas — without classes that make a college education more attainable.
“What’s at stake is access to opportunity, especially for high school students at Title I, lower-income high schools, rural high schools … It’s really been an on-ramp for so many students,” said John Fink, who studies dual enrollment at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. “But we also know that many students are left behind.”
To teach the auto class, Tokheim had to apply to become a Madison College instructor. As a certified auto service technician with a master’s degree, the veteran teacher met the college’s requirements for the course.
But for many teachers, teaching dual enrollment would require enrolling in graduate school, even if they already have a master’s degree.
That, school leaders say, is a hard sell, despite the state offering to reimburse districts for the cost. Teachers in Wisconsin often don’t make much more money teaching advanced courses the way they do in some other states, and adding these courses doesn’t raise a school’s state rating.
“You’re asking people who are well educated to begin with to go back to school, which takes time and effort, and their reward for that is they get to teach a dual credit class,” said Mark McQuade, Appleton Area School District’s assistant superintendent of assessment, curriculum and instruction.
Nationwide, the number of high schoolers earning college credit has skyrocketed in recent years. In Wisconsin, the tally has more than doubled, with students notching experience in subjects ranging from manufacturing to business.
Most earn credit from their local technical college without leaving their high school campus. In the 2023-24 school year, 1 in 3 community college students in the state was a high schooler.
Education and state leaders have welcomed the trend, pointing to the potential benefits: Students who take dual enrollment classes are more likely to enroll in college after high school. They can save hundreds or thousands of dollars on college tuition and fees. If they do enroll in college, they spend less time completing a degree.
“It also proves to the kids — to some of our kids that are first-generation — that they can do college work,” McQuade said.
But not all students get these advantages. Many Wisconsin schools offer very few dual enrollment courses, or none at all. A July Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis showed small, urban or high-poverty schools are least likely to offer the classes.
Wisconsin Watch talked to leaders in five school districts. All said the shortage of qualified teachers was one of the biggest barriers to growing their dual enrollment programs.
In 2015, the Higher Learning Commission — which oversees and evaluates the state’s technical colleges — released new guidelines about instructor qualifications. The new policy required many of Wisconsin’s dual enrollment teachers to have a master’s degree and at least 18 graduate credits in the subject they teach, just like college instructors.
In 2023, the Commission walked back the new policy.
By then, colleges across the state had already adopted the higher standard.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin schools have struggled to hire and retain teachers, even without college credit involved. Four in 10 new teachers stop teaching or leave the state within six years, a 2024 Department of Public Instruction analysis shows.
The subject-specific prerequisite is much different from the graduate education K-12 teachers have historically sought: the kind that would help them become principals or administrators, said Eric Conn, Green Bay Area Public Schools’ director of curricular pathways and post-secondary partnerships.
“To advance in education, it wasn’t about getting a master’s in a subject area. It was getting a master’s in education to develop into educational administration or educational technology,” Conn said. For teachers who already have a master’s degree, he said, going back to school just to teach one or two new classes is “a large ask.”
When the Higher Learning Commission announced the heightened requirements in 2015, leaders of the Wisconsin Technical College System sounded the alarm. They warned 85% of the instructors currently teaching these classes could be disqualified, whittling students’ college credit opportunities.
Wisconsin education leaders called on the Legislature to allocate millions of dollars to help teachers get the training they’d need — and they agreed. In 2017, lawmakers created a grant program to reimburse school districts for teachers’ graduate tuition.
But of the $500,000 available every year, hundreds of thousands go unused.
“Nobody’s ever, ever requested this funding and been denied because of a funding shortage,” said Tammie DeVooght Blaney, executive secretary of the Higher Educational Aids Board, which manages the grant.
Tuition and fees for a single graduate credit at a Universities of Wisconsin school can cost over $800, putting the total cost of 18 graduate credits around $15,000. For teachers who don’t already have a master’s degree, the cost is even steeper. The state grant requires teachers or districts to front the cost and apply for reimbursement yearly, with no guarantee they’ll get it.
A handful of Green Bay teachers have used the grant, Conn said, but many just aren’t interested in returning to school, even if it’s free.
The district offers 50 dual enrollment courses, but he’d like to offer classes in more core subjects, which help students meet college general education requirements. There just aren’t enough teachers qualified to teach college sciences and math to offer the same options across the district’s four high schools.
Teachers are busy, and not just in the classroom, said Jon Shelton, president of AFT-Wisconsin, one of the state’s teachers unions. Many already spend extra hours coaching, grading or leading after-school activities. Those who do go back to school typically enroll in one class at a time, he said, meaning they could be studying for several years.
The financial perks for teachers returning to school for dual enrollment credentials are dubious at best.
Some teachers get a salary bump for obtaining a master’s degree, and some earn modest bonuses for teaching dual enrollment. But many teachers make no more than they would have without the extra training.
“There’s no incentive,” said Tokheim, the Madison auto instructor, who receives a $50 yearly stipend for teaching the college course. In contrast to his standard classes, his dual enrollment class required him to attend two kinds of training.
There’s little incentive for schools either. They receive no extra state funding to offer college-level courses. Plus, the classes don’t factor into their state report card score, which measures students’ standardized test performance and graduation preparation, among other things.
Leaders at Sheboygan’s Central High School wish it did. At that school, where the majority of students are Latino and almost all are low-income, 1 in 3 students took dual enrollment courses in the 2023-24 school year. Still, the state gave the school a failing grade.
“It’s an afterthought in our report card, and it’s always the thing that we can celebrate,” Principal Joshua Kestell said.
So why would a teacher take on the added schooling?
“It’s good for kids,” Tokheim said. “That’s why they get us teachers, because we care too much.”
Other potential draws: the challenge of teaching more rigorous courses or the opportunity to collaborate with college instructors.
Heather Fellner-Spetz retired two years ago from teaching English at Sevastopol High School in Sturgeon Bay. She taught college-level oral communication classes for 10 years before she retired. When the Higher Learning Commission set the heightened requirements, she was allowed to continue teaching dual enrollment while she studied for more graduate credits.
“There wasn’t much I didn’t enjoy about teaching it. It was just fabulous,” Fellner-Spetz said.
She especially liked having a college professor observe her class, and she said it was good for the students, too. “When they had other people come into the room and watch the lesson or watch them perform, it just ups the ante on pressure.”
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether it’s necessary for dual enrollment teachers to have the same credentials as college professors.
“Folks running these programs generally would say that teaching a quality college course to a high school student requires a unique skill set that blends high school and college teaching, and that is not necessarily captured by the traditional (graduate coursework) standard,” Fink said.
Wisconsin educators are divided on that question. Fox Valley Technical College has kept the higher standard, limiting the number of Appleton teachers who qualify. McQuade, the Appleton leader, questions those “restrictions,” saying he believes his teachers are well qualified to teach college-level courses. A different standard tied to student performance, for example, could let his district offer more classes across each of its schools.
Schauna Rasmussen, dean of early college and workforce strategy at Madison College, said the answer isn’t to lower the standard, but to help more teachers reach it.
In October, a group of Republican Wisconsin lawmakers introduced a bill aimed at making it easier for students to find dual enrollment opportunities. It would create a portal for families to view options and streamline application deadlines, among other changes.
It doesn’t address the shortage of qualified teachers.
“Separate legislation would likely have to be introduced addressing expanding the pool of teachers for those programs,” Chris Gonzalez, communications director for lead author state Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, wrote in an email.
As of Monday no such legislation has been introduced.
Correction: This story has been corrected to note that the Higher Learning Commission revised its policy on faculty qualifications in 2023. The current policy requires that colleges have “reasonable policies and procedures to determine that faculty are qualified” but it states colleges can consider “a variety of factors, including academic credentials, progress towards academic credentials, equivalent experience, or some combination thereof.” Wisconsin Watch regrets the error.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, and Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide. They work in partnership with Open Campus.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin high schools want to offer more college classes. First, teachers must go back to school. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The Trump administration is no longer considering nursing as a professional degree. That means getting financial help to complete advanced degrees in nursing could become more difficult at a time when Wisconsin is facing a shortage.
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Universities of Wisconsin students will have an easier time transferring general education credits from one campus to another after the Board of Regents approved a new core general education policy this week.
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It’s the most recent loss to the UW system's footprint in smaller communities around the state. Alumni and education experts say the closures also make education less accessible for many in Wisconsin.
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Enrollment across state universities has ticked upward for a third year, according to the Universities of Wisconsin. While the number of new freshmen from the dairy state hit a new record, international student enrollment fell by more than 7 percent.
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UW-Platteville will shutter its Baraboo Sauk County campus at the end of this school year, according to an announcement Friday.
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Bascom Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Ron Cogswell | used by permission of the photographer)
University of Wisconsin campuses could be limited in their ability to raise tuition under two Republican bills that received a hearing in the Senate Universities and Technical Colleges committee. One would leverage tuition freezes on campuses as a penalty for free speech violations, while the other would aim to help with affordability for students and families by capping tuition increases.
With the conclusion of the budget process over the summer and a $250 million investment in the UW system, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have recently turned their attention to potential policy changes that could be made to the higher education system in Wisconsin. Democratic lawmakers announced their own proposals for helping with higher education costs last week.
Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said her bill would enshrine the principle of current University of Wisconsin system policy in law to clarify and protect the First Amendment rights of students, staff and visitors.
Current UW system policy includes its commitment to freedom of speech and expression along with some accountability measures including conduct and due process mechanisms to address violations.
A similar bill passed the Assembly in 2023, but failed to receive a vote in the Senate. Earlier versions of the policy were introduced after a controversial survey of UW campuses that found that a majority of students who responded said they were afraid to express views on certain issues in class. The survey had an average response rate of 12.5% across all UW System campuses.
The latest iteration of the bill was introduced just six days after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who has become a recurring point of discussion and debate. Lawmakers passed a resolution this week to honor his life.
Nedweski noted that another survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that found that 35% of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable at least in rare cases. The survey included responses from 423 people.
“It’s clearly even more chilling in light of the recent political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus. When we accept the false premise that speech is equivalent to violence, we allow violence to replace speech as a means of debate… We’ve seen many of our college campuses devolve into marketplaces of fear of certain viewpoints,” Nedweski said. “While Charlie Kirk’s assassination on the college campus is the most extreme example of this, it is not the first time conservatives on campus have been threatened or intimidated for their views.”
Nedweski said the bill would help restore trust.
“The breakdown in public trust is real. It will only get worse unless our colleges and universities get serious about restoring intellectual diversity on campus, I believe,” Nedweski said.
SB 498 would bar UW institutions from restricting speech from a speaker if their conduct “is not unlawful and does not materially and substantially disrupt the functioning of the UW institution or technical college.” It would also restrict enforcement of time, place and manner restrictions on expressive activities in public forum spaces, designating any place a “free speech zone,” charging security fees as a part of a permit application and sanctioning people for discriminatory harassment unless the speech “targets its victim on the basis of a protected class under law, and is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars a student from receiving equal access to educational opportunities or benefits.”
If an institution is found to violate the provisions by a state or federal court, then it would receive a notice and a person whose expressive rights were violated would be able to bring action against the UW Board of Regents or a technical college board. A plaintiff could be awarded damages of at least $500 for the initial violation plus $50 for each day after the complaint was filed and the violation continues up to $100,000. A plaintiff could also be awarded court costs and reasonable attorney fees.
Students, employees and campus organizations would have a due process guarantee under the bill. If the due process provisions are violated more than once in a five-year period, a campus would be required to freeze tuition for all students for the following two academic years.
Nedweski said she hadn’t spoken with the UW system about the legislation this session, but she is open to conversations.
“I’ve expressed it from the start of the session for the UW to come and work with us on this to get to a place where they can be a thumbs up, but I haven’t heard from anyone,” Nedweski said. “They will express some concerns about certain language in the bill and definitions, and I’d like to say today that, of course, the door is still open.”
UW Interim Vice President of University Relations Chris Patton that the system’s concerns with the bills center on the penalties.
Patton said the penalty of freezing state funding would put the system’s financial health at risk — and potentially compromise the system’s ability to carry out its mission of being a “marketplace of ideas.”
“Freedom of expression and free speech is not just a constitutional principle. It’s at the very core of what makes our universities thrive,” Patton said. “The First Amendment guarantees this right, and our institutions take seriously our responsibility to uphold it for all students, faculty, staff, visitors and stakeholders at the Universities of Wisconsin. We already have really robust policies and procedures in place.”
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton), a coauthor on the bill, urged lawmakers to “please understand” that the bill is “not to punish any of our institutions,” but is to “ensure that they’re following what’s already in the Bill of Rights.”
Sen. Chis Larson (D-Milwaukee), the top Democrat on the committee, expressed concern about the aims of the legislation, whether free speech was a top concern that was widespread on campuses and whether the bill could bolster harmful language.
“I appreciate you guys coming up here to embrace DEI for Republican viewpoints, which this seems to be what this bill is all about — making sure that Republican viewpoints are more represented and encouraged and being inclusive to that,” Larson said.
“You can call it DEI for conservatism, but there’s nothing in the bill that addresses anything specific to conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats,” Nedweski replied. “It’s free speech protections for everyone.”
Larson noted that he represents the UW-Milwaukee campus and often speaks with students about their concerns and free speech is typically low on the list. He said he hears concerns about affordability and safety more frequently.
“Other concerns include safety, especially for students who are LGBTQ, students who are of a different race than Caucasian, of their safety on campus, of being targeted with hate crimes,” Larson said.
Larson also brought up a recent Politico article, which exposed racist messages sent into a group chat of Young Republicans, to ask whether lawmakers thought their bill could encourage that type of speech.
Larson said he wasn’t concerned with self-censorship that discouraged people from “saying these racist, homophobic, xenophobic, glorification of rape things out in the public, because that is something that in a free and open society should have consequences associated with it.”
“We do not have the exemption for hate speech in our laws and in the First Amendment. It does not exempt hate speech,” Larson said. “It seems to me that this [bill] would pave the way to be able to say, yes, that would be something that is not only allowed on campus, but encouraged.”
Nedweski said she was not concerned that the bill would “further unhinge people.”
“We’re all concerned about the political temperature that has risen so high in this country,” Nedweski said. “I don’t have concerns this bill is going to push anybody overboard. The intent is to protect people whether I agree with what their ideas… are or not. I have no association with the group that you’re talking about. I don’t agree with the things that they said. It’s unfortunate that that happened.”
Under SB 399, the UW Board of Regents would be prohibited from increasing undergraduate tuition by more than the consumer price index increase in a given year.
The bill, coauthored by Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville), was introduced this year after the UW system adopted its third consecutive tuition increase in July. The increases were a maximum of 5% for each campus and were implemented after the recent state budget did not reach the requests the system said would be needed to avoid a hike.
“With the continued rising prices in almost every area of the economy, some increase in resident tuition is to be expected but we must set common sense guardrails so that any price increases are reasonable, ensuring the UW system remains a cost-effective option for Wisconsin families,” Jacque said.
Jacque said the recent hike “might be the impetus for the timing this session” but he has seen it as a “reasonable policy” for a while, noting that versions of the bill have been proposed in previous years.
Murphy said he thought the legislation would make it so that lawmakers don’t “have to always be looking” at tuition.
“It’s just up and down and up and down and up and down,” Murphy said. The bill, he added, would help provide a semblance of predictability down the line. “If you have a youngster in the K-12 system and you’re looking at what college is going to cost in the future, you could probably have a good idea of where it is going to go.”
Larson said he found it “noble” what the Republican lawmakers were trying to accomplish with the bill, but asked about why there wasn’t any state contribution included in the bill.
He noted that the portion of state funding that makes up the UW system’s budget has been decreasing over many years.
“It’s like the cost of groceries,” Larson said, comparing it to “shrinkflation,” a form of inflation where the price of a product stays the same but the size or quantity of a product is reduced. “We’re gonna freeze the cost of a loaf of bread, and then year after year, you’re going to get one slice less, one slice less, one slice less. It will still be the same cost, but you’re getting less. I worry… if you freeze it, we’re going to be getting the equivalent of one slice less every single year in terms of what the deliverable is from the University.”
Murphy noted that the legislation would just cap increases, not freeze tuition.
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It took Allison Beining and Kaitlyn Weyenberg almost three years to get accepted into Fox Valley Technical College’s dental hygiene program. While they inched up the waiting list for one of the coveted 15 spots, they completed dental assisting training, which taught them to operate radiographic equipment and sterilize medical instruments, among other skills.
Now, as the two students prepare to graduate and begin working as hygienists, the Appleton-based college is debuting a $2.1 million expansion to oral health training — so future students won’t have to wait as long to enroll. Across the state, 13 more campuses are unveiling similar projects.
Following a $20 million investment from the Legislature, Wisconsin’s technical colleges are trying to solve the state’s dental worker shortage by revamping their oral health programs, constructing upgraded labs and enrolling hundreds more students.
“We know that this is a need, and this expansion allows us to serve more students in these programs than we had previously, which means more hygienists, more assistants into the community and into the workforce quicker,” FVTC Chief Academic Officer Jennifer Lanter said.
Wisconsin’s dearth of dental workers has been well documented in recent years. Forty-two of Wisconsin’s 72 counties are impacted by the scarcity, according to the Rural Health Information Hub.
Dentists are poorly distributed across the state, with an uneven share practicing in metropolitan areas and too few in rural regions. Too few dental hygienists and assistants — largely trained by technical schools — have entered the field to replace those who have retired in recent years.
Officials at nearly every Wisconsin technical college are looking to respond by expanding their training capacity. The technical college system trains about 2,200 students in oral health professions each year, and the new state funding will allow colleges to increase enrollment by about 10%, System President Layla Merrifield said.
An influx of students graduating and entering the workforce should make booking oral health care appointments easier, industry officials say.
“Not only was it a workforce issue for our dentist offices, but it was starting to impact patient care — access to care — where patients weren’t able to get their cleanings and their routine work done,” said Wisconsin Dental Association Executive Director Mark Paget. “It became a health issue for us, and thankfully, the Legislature understood the problem.”
Industry leaders began staring down the barrel of a dental worker shortage roughly seven years ago. Then, an influx of hygienists retired during the COVID-19 pandemic, “throwing gasoline on the fire,” Paget said.
The dental association created a task force with the state’s technical college system, the Office of Rural Health and the Workforce Development Association to discuss solutions.
It quickly identified a major snag keeping new workers from entering the profession: The state’s eight dental hygiene training programs were all at capacity, with students stuck on waiting lists to participate.
“We met with the technical colleges several times and said, ‘OK, what would it take to increase your class sizes?’ Because that’s obviously where the problem is. There’s just not enough capacity for the schools to teach the classes,” Paget said. “The technical college said the magic words. It’s always money, right? It always boils down to money.”
Merrifield said the steep cost of installing equipment, such as chairs and tools, was a major barrier to colleges educating more students.
In FVTC’s case, that meant some of the dental lab spaces were physically cramped, which allowed room for fewer learners and sometimes led to errors.
“The sterilization room … it was so small,” Beining, the student, recalled. “Things would get lost, people would get frustrated.”
In 2023, the dental association’s advocacy team lobbied the Legislature for more money to increase training capacity. Lawmakers allocated $20 million in that year’s budget to expand the oral health care workforce, such as increased class sizes, new programs and investments in equipment.
The funds flowed to the technical college system, which dispersed portions to schools as grants. Fourteen out of 16 colleges received a share, Merrifield said.
While roughly half of the colleges offer dental hygiene programs, some funding went to assistant training and creating Expanded Function Dental Auxiliary certificate programs, which give advanced training to dental assistants. FVTC used grant funds to introduce an EFDA certificate this year.
Inside Lakeshore College’s dental lab, it might be easy to forget you’re on a college campus and not inside a dentist’s office. The space is outfitted with a reception desk and waiting room, 11 sleek dental chairs and a locker room for students to dress in their scrubs.
The college, based in Cleveland, Wisconsin, used its $1.2 million in grant funds to renovate its dental lab, upgrade equipment and introduce a dental hygiene associate degree.
Previously, Lakeshore College offered only a semester-long dental assistant certificate. Now, the college will increase to training 15 assistant students each semester and enroll 10 more in the hygiene program.
“There’s definitely a need in this area,” said Christina McGinnis, Lakeshore’s dental program coordinator. “Often when you call the dentist, it takes a long time to get in. So having more chairs, more students can definitely help fill that void in the local community.”
Inside a newly constructed classroom, three stations are equipped with mannequin heads with wide-open mouths. The students will practice using their suction and cleaning instruments on the dummies before they work on real people. The simulators are just one of the technology upgrades the college was able to purchase with the grant funds, and they will help students become familiar with the tools they’ll use in the industry.
“(We’re) trying to stay on top of what’s out there, for what our students are going to be seeing when they go out to the community, working as assistants or hygienists,” McGinnis said. “They know what they’re going to be exposed to here, and then they’ll also see that in the dental world.”
Almost all Lakeshore College dental assisting students have a full-time job lined up when they graduate, McGinnis said, and it’s typical for students to enter the field earning $20 per hour. The college is waiting for a dental program accreditor to approve the hygienist degree. Officials hope it will launch in the fall of 2026.
Other Wisconsin technical colleges are starting programs tailored to needs in their service areas. For example, Madison Area Technical College recently renovated its lab and added an EFDA certificate program. Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, surrounded by rural counties with severe shortages, is introducing the state’s first dental therapist training.
“If you’re growing up as a kid on Medicaid in the Northwoods, you almost never see a dentist. It’s very, very difficult to even see a hygienist,” Merrifield said. “So the idea with that particular program is to produce these professionals — not that they’re gonna compete with dentists because they can’t do everything that a dentist can do — but they can expand that access and make it a little bit easier.”
In the meantime, the industry just has to get through the next year or two before the additional students start graduating from the programs and filling the many empty jobs, Paget said.
“The system works exactly how the system was supposed to work,” he said. “The technical colleges, the Legislature, the governor, everybody came together to solve a problem.”
This story was updated with the correct name for Lakeshore College. Wisconsin Watch regrets the error.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
Long wait for a dental appointment? Wisconsin tech colleges are working to fix that is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison saw a sharp drop in the number of new students attending from overseas this fall, the decline coming after college officials voiced concerns about the impact of Trump administration policies on international enrollment.
The post UW-Madison sees more than 30 percent decline in international freshman students appeared first on WPR.
UW-Milwaukee offers its own tuition promise program which covers up to four years of tuition and segregated fees for students from families earning less than $62,000 per year. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Democratic lawmakers are proposing a package of higher education bills to help address affordability for students by investing in a statewide tuition promise program and to support faculty and staff members by reversing Walker-era collective bargaining and tenure policies.
Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), the ranking member on the Assembly Colleges and Universities committee, said Democratic lawmakers are looking for ways to ensure Wisconsin’s higher education system is strong and accessible to “anybody who has the talent and the work ethic to want to pursue something.”
“That’s part of our American dream, is that no matter where you start out in life, you’ve got an opportunity to do better and to gain knowledge and training,” Emerson said.
Emerson said Democratic lawmakers hope the bills can kickstart discussions about policy changes that could be made. She noted that Republican lawmakers have often stripped proposals from the budget, saying that policy should be passed through individual bills outside of the budget process.
“We’re putting some of these bills back out now and saying, let’s have the policy discussion,” Emerson said. “If you’re not willing to have that during the budget, let’s have the discussion now.”
Emerson said the first pair of bills that lawmakers unveiled at a press conference last week seek to specifically help with the affordability of higher education.
“A lot of us heard loud and clear last election that pocketbook issues are really what are leading people right now,” Emerson said, adding that it’s part of the reason she supported the recent state budget. “But it wasn’t a perfect budget, and so we thought, how can we make this a little bit better?”
One bill, coauthored by Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) and Rep. Brienne Brown (D-Whitewater), would implement a statewide “tuition promise” program, allowing first-time, in-state students from households with an adjusted gross income of $71,000 or less to have their tuition covered at any UW school, other than UW-Madison. Under the bill, the state would dedicate nearly $40 million towards the program.
The program would function as “last-dollar, gap funding” meaning it would fill in the rest of the tuition costs after all federal and state grants and scholarships are calculated.
According to The Hechinger Report , as of 2024, 37 states offered a statewide promise program.
UW-Madison already offers “Bucky’s Tuition Promise,” which launched in 2018 and is funded with private gifts and other institutional resources, not state tax dollars. The program guarantees four years of tuition and segregated fees for any incoming freshman from Wisconsin whose family’s annual household adjusted gross income is $65,000 or less.
Recent studies have found the tuition promise program increased enrollment among accepted students at UW-Madison and increased retention rates.
UW-Milwaukee also offers its own program which covers up to four years of tuition and segregated fees for students from families earning less than $62,000 per year.
The UW system also has a version of the program that recently relaunched in 2025 after the system secured private funding. The Wisconsin Tuition Promise first launched in 2023, but was ended in 2024 after Republican lawmakers declined to fund the program.
Another bill by Dassler-Alfheim and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) would invest $10 million in the UW system for student retention and talent development efforts.
At the press conference last week, Dassler-Alfheim said the bills are essential for supporting the state’s workforce.
“If our workforce is the engine that runs our economy, then our Universities of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical Colleges are the gasoline that power that engine as our baby boomers retire in droves. We have workforce shortages in every category. We have all struggled to schedule a doctor’s appointment, a plumber, an accountant, or even a cleaning at the dentist,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “The purpose of these two bills is to help qualified students access the higher education needed to advance themselves and to fulfill the promise to Wisconsin employers to develop the workforce necessary to maintain and grow Wisconsin’s economy.”
Democratic lawmakers also circulated bill drafts meant to help support staff and faculty at UW system campuses.
One would again allow most UW system employees, faculty and academic staff to collectively bargain over wages, hours, and conditions of employment. UW employees were stripped of that ability under the Walker-era law Act 10.
Another bill would reverse changes made in the 2015 state budget that eliminated language in state statute that protected tenure. Lawmakers said in 2015 that the changes were necessary to give the UW system flexibility to deal with budget cuts, though faculty members said then that the changes were an attack on tenure.
Emerson said it is getting harder to recruit people to work at the universities in the state and that some of the changes could help.
“If we’re making these big changes about how universities are dealt with, staff and faculty need to have a seat at the table for having these conversations and having a seat at the table in meaningful ways where their concerns are addressed too,” Emerson said.
Emerson noted that in recent years Republican lawmakers have pushed through proposals and deals that triggered pushback from faculty members.
The most recent budget deal negotiated between lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers included new work load requirements for UW faculty, mandating that they teach a minimum of 24 credits per academic year, or four 3-credit courses, starting in Sept. 2026. The requirement has garnered concerned reactions from faculty, some of who have said it could be difficult to balance teaching and research demands.
In 2023, Republican lawmakers negotiated with UW leaders to secure concessions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in exchange for staff pay raises and money for buildings. The deal garnered a lot of pushback from staff and students at the time.
“You know, the workload requirements that came through the budget, or the DEI deal that happened last session, none of those would have happened if we had collective bargaining in place,” Emerson said. “Those are two things that when you have people who don’t work in an industry trying to put working parameters around that industry, it falls flat.”
The Democratic proposals will face a difficult road in the Republican-led Legislature. Emerson said the likelihood for a public hearing on the Democratic bills is “slim to none.”
However, Emerson said Democratic lawmakers plan to take the ideas to people in the state other ways. She and some of her Democratic colleagues will be on the UW-Stevens Point campus this week to start a tour of campuses around the state.
Emerson said the purpose is to have as many conversations with staff, faculty and students as possible.
“If we’re not going to have a hearing in Madison on it, we are ready to take this around to other campuses and other parts of the state and have the conversation on the college campuses,” Emerson said. “I want to hear what matters to the students. I want to hear what, you know, the career people need their students to have to get jobs. I want to hear from the business people in these communities.”
Emerson said part of the goal is to also start laying the foundation for if Democrats win more legislative power in 2026.
“It’s always good when you’re making policy about something that you’re talking to the people that this is going to impact, so this is what we’re really hoping to do — work out all the kinks, and dust everything off, and, hopefully, have a little bit more governing power coming up in the next session, and be able to really hit the ground running with some of these bills,” Emerson said.
Emerson said Democratic lawmakers’ approach is focused on figuring out how the state can make higher education available for “anybody no matter their zip code, no matter their income level,” and she expressed skepticism the Republican bills will do that.
“A lot of the bills that I see coming from my Republican colleagues about higher education tend to either be punitive — one person said one thing on one campus, therefore we have to make sure nobody ever says that again and getting into these free speech pieces — or they’re doing things in a way that tells me that they haven’t been on a college campus for a really long time,” Emerson said.
The Senate Universities and Technical Colleges Committee is scheduled to have a public hearing on eight Republican-authored higher education-related bills Wednesday.
One bill, coauthored by Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville), would place caps on annual tuition hikes. It was proposed in reaction to the 5% tuition increase that was approved after the recent state budget was completed. The increase was the third annual hike in a row. UW President Jay Rothman and UW regents had said the tuition increases would be necessary if the system didn’t secure enough funding from the state.
In a memo about the bill, the Republican lawmakers said the Legislature needed to “implement a common sense law placing controls on these types of skyrocketing tuition increases” and that a cap on tuition increases would provide families with “the predictability required to budget for college expenses into the future.” Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) has also argued that the bill is about “protecting affordability.”
Under the bill, the UW Board of Regents would be prohibited from increasing undergraduate tuition by more than the consumer price index increase in a given year.
Emerson said she didn’t think the bill would have the intended effect of helping students and families afford school. She noted some of the effects seen during the decade-long tuition freeze implemented under the Walker administration.
UW leaders said at the time that the freeze was unsustainable as it limited campuses ability to maintain its program and course offerings and wages for staff and faculty.
“Students couldn’t get the classes that they needed… so people would sometimes have to go for an extra year to get all of the classes that they needed to complete their degree. It ended up costing people more because they had to stay in longer to get the one last requirement that they needed for their degree,” Emerson said. “It’s a good messaging point to say we’re gonna not increase [tuition] by a certain amount, but I don’t think that that has the end result that they’re thinking it does.”
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Public college is less affordable in Wisconsin than in nearly every other state, according to a new analysis of 2022-23 school year data. The nonprofit National College Attainment Network, which advocates for college access, reports annually on each state’s “affordability gap” between the cost of college and what students and their families can pay.
The analysis included 28 Wisconsin colleges, finding that all of the state’s public four-year schools and nearly 90% of the technical colleges were unaffordable.
Just four states ranked lower than Wisconsin in the share of their colleges considered affordable: Delaware, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Rhode Island. Nationwide, nearly half (48%) of all public four-year colleges and more than a third (35%) of community or technical colleges were affordable, the report found.
“We saw (Wisconsin) stand out as particularly unaffordable as compared to our national average and to the other states in the region,” said report author Louisa Woodhouse, a senior associate for the organization.
To estimate what students could pay at each school, Woodhouse added up the average grants, loans and work study payments they receive, as reported in a federal database. She added that to an estimate of summer wages — based on full-time work at the state minimum wage — and an “expected family contribution” using average Pell grant awards.
Woodhouse compared those figures with each school’s published cost of attendance. That included tuition, fees and estimated costs of items like housing, food, books and transportation. She added a flat $300 for emergency expenses.
The report considers a college affordable if attendance and emergency expenses totaled less than income and aid.
The study included 13 Wisconsin public colleges or universities that grant bachelor’s degrees, as well as 15 of the state’s 16 technical colleges. It excluded Madison College, which belongs to the technical college system but is classified as a four-year school in federal data.
None of the four-year schools and just two technical colleges were affordable, Woodhouse found.
Wisconsin technical college students face an average affordability gap of $1,336, nearly triple the $486 national average, Woodhouse calculated.
Students at Wisconsin’s four-year schools experienced a $3,549 gap, more than twice the national average of $1,555.
Calling affordability and accessibility “cornerstones of our mission,” Universities of Wisconsin spokesperson Ethan Schuh noted that the system charges the lowest average tuition rates in the Upper Midwest.
“We recognize there can be affordability gaps,” Schuh said in an email, adding that the report’s “novel datasets and methodologies” might “unintentionally disadvantage universities with low tuition and limited aid,” like those in the UW system.
Schuh attributed cost issues raised in the report to broader national trends, which “underscore the need for continued investment in financial aid and student support.”
“While we are not immune to these challenges, we are actively working to address them,” Schuh said.
Wisconsin Technical College System spokesperson Katy Pettersen said the report “raises important concerns about affordability.” But she questioned whether the study’s methodology accurately evaluated the state’s tech colleges, where students often attend school part time while working full time. Many earn above minimum wage in Wisconsin’s competitive labor market, Pettersen said.
Meanwhile, Pettersen said, Wisconsin’s technical colleges work differently than counterparts in other states, making them hard to compare. Wisconsin’s tech colleges emphasize hands-on education in technology-intensive labs, while many community colleges elsewhere prioritize lower-cost classroom education, Pettersen said.
“We acknowledge that many students face unmet financial needs. Addressing these challenges is a priority, and we continue to explore ways to support students beyond tuition,” Petterson said in an email. “Affordability is a multifaceted issue, and while we recognize the challenges, we remain committed to providing high-value education and supporting students in every way we can.”
Wisconsin college costs are partially the result of state and federal policy decisions. Like many of their Midwestern peers, Wisconsin’s public colleges rely heavily on tuition, Woodhouse said.
Wisconsin’s state government allocates nearly 17% less funding per full-time student than it did in 1980, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association — a trend UW system leaders are closely watching.
Today, the state provides just 20% of the system’s budget, half the share it covered in 1985, Schuh said.
About 60% of university revenue now comes from tuition and fees, nearly triple the previous levels, Schuh added.
“This shift has placed a growing financial burden on students and families, limiting access to the same educational opportunities that have long defined Wisconsin’s public universities,” Schuh said.
Paying for college in Wisconsin could get more difficult in the coming years, Woodhouse said, pointing to recent federal cuts to food aid, Medicaid and other safety net programs. States often fill the gap in those services by diverting money from education.
Colleges, in turn, may raise tuition to patch budget holes, putting college further out of reach.
”That’s just another argument towards the importance of investing in higher education funding, both operational support for public institutions and also need-based aid in the years to come,” Woodhouse said.
Wisconsin tech college tuition over the last decade has risen no faster than inflation, Petterson said. At UW system campuses, tuition rose 4% to 5% this year, following a 10-year tuition freeze.
Political debates are swirling around the value of college, with Republicans increasingly asking whether pursuing a degree is worthwhile. Carole Trone, executive director of the Wisconsin-based Fair Opportunity Project, wants more bipartisan scrutiny of those high price tags.
“Are colleges doing everything they can do to keep the college costs down?” asked Trone, whose organization offers online counseling to help students nationwide apply to and pay for college.
Some studies show inflation-adjusted tuition rates have plateaued or even declined, Trone said, but rent and other living costs are soaring.
“The cost of college keeps going up because of all those other costs that, in some cases, are outside of a college’s control,” Trone said.
Meanwhile, federal aid doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. Federal Pell grant awards, for instance, have increased more slowly than inflation. In 1975, they covered more than three-quarters of the average cost to attend a public, four-year university, according to the National College Attainment Network. That’s compared to just one-third of average attendance costs today.
A growing number of Wisconsin students are eligible to have their full tuition and fees covered with the help of “promise” programs, which pick up remaining costs after eligible students use federal financial aid and scholarships.
UW-Madison’s Bucky’s Tuition Promise, launched in 2018, helps students with household incomes of $65,000 or less. It covers most costs but excludes expenses like rent, groceries or textbooks.
The UW system expanded the program to other campuses in 2023 but cut it the next year due to budget woes.
The system resumed the program this fall with private funding: Madison-based student loan guarantor Ascendium Education Group will cover costs for students in households making $55,000 or less.
Until the program has stable funding, Woodhouse said, eligible students may hesitate to enroll in college for fear of being stuck with costs in future years.
Democratic state lawmakers want to allocate nearly $40 million to provide that stability. They introduced legislation on Thursday to extend the Wisconsin Tuition Promise program with state dollars, covering costs for students of all UW schools except UW-Madison whose families make $71,000 or less.
“Higher education powers Wisconsin and cost should not prevent students from families in every income bracket in Wisconsin from having the opportunity to earn a degree,” Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said in an emailed statement.
Schuh said the proposal would allow Wisconsin to compete as other states take steps to lower college costs.
“It would eliminate the affordability gap for thousands of students and restore the promise of higher education as a public good,” Schuh said. “It would ensure that the opportunities available to past generations remain accessible to all Wisconsinites today and into the future.”
Disclosure: Ascendium Education Group is a donor to Wisconsin Watch but has no control over its editorial decisions. A complete list of donors and funders, as well as donation acceptance policies, can be found on our funding page.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
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Study: Wisconsin trails most states in college affordability is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Republican legislators are proposing a "Dual Enrollment Reform Bill" they say would simplify the process to make it more accessible for all students.
The post Dual Enrollment Reform Bill aims to make program more accessible to students appeared first on WPR.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, opened for new and returning college and university students on Oct. 1. Students typically have until June 1 to apply for the best chance of receiving aid.
The form connects students with loans, grants and scholarships through the U.S. Department of Education and your higher education institution.
Students considering attending a two- or four-year college or university should fill out the FAFSA form, even if they haven’t committed to a school or are unsure whether they will pursue higher education.
Carole Trone serves on the board for College Goal Wisconsin, an organization that hosts FAFSA completion events around the state. She said the FAFSA process usually runs smoother when parents let their student take the lead.
“It works best if the student starts their part of the application and then hands it over to the parent,” Trone said.
Students should first make an account, called a Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID. If a student is a dependent, at least one parent or guardian will need to make a Federal Student Aid ID and contribute to the form.
The Department of Education requires students to provide a Social Security number to fill out the FAFSA form. Contributing parents without a Social Security number can make an account but will need to check a box certifying they don’t have a Social Security number.
When creating a Federal Student Aid ID, Trone said, it’s important to double check that all information, including names and dates of birth, are correct. The Department of Education won’t be able to verify your information if these details are incorrect, which Trone said complicates the process.
If students or parents already have a Federal Student Aid ID, Trone said the ID stays with them forever and they should use the same account.
FAFSA requires certain information from students and parents to verify income, assets and financial need.
The Department of Education will use applicants’ Social Security numbers to access their income with the Internal Revenue Service. Parents and students must give consent for the IRS to access information on their tax returns, even if an applicant doesn’t have tax returns to supply.
The Department of Education recommends still having the most recent tax returns for information that isn’t imported from the IRS.
The form also asks about assets – the current balance of cash, checking and saving accounts – and the net worth of any businesses and investments.
Students will also need to provide a list of schools they’re interested in attending. Students should list all schools even if they aren’t committed.
“The options that FASFA gives you is not just for four-year college, it’s for two-year college, it’s for a number of certification programs,” Trone said. “It doesn’t obligate you to anything.”
The types of federal aid you receive can be split into two main groups: loans and grants. The biggest difference is you need to pay back loans but not grants. Filling out your FAFSA form also helps you become eligible for need-based scholarships through your higher education institution.
You can make payments while enrolled at least part time (six credit hours, usually about two classes) in school but are not required to until after you graduate or go below six credit hours. After you do either of these, it triggers a six-month grace period before you’re required to make payments.
The federal government offers several types of loans in two categories: Direct and Direct PLUS.
The amount of interest on these loans depends on the year you take them out. The interest rate changes each year on July 1.
Students can receive two kinds of Direct loans: subsidized and unsubsidized.
Subsidized loans mean no interest accumulates on the loan while in school or during your grace period, saving the student money in the long run.
Unsubsidized loans accumulate interest beginning when the student takes out the loan.
The Department of Education also offers Direct PLUS loans, which are federal loans that parents of dependent undergraduate students, graduate or professional students can use to help pay for school.
Parents of dependent students can take a Parent PLUS loan to support additional education costs that aren’t covered by other financial aid.
This loan originally did not have a cap, but as a result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Parent PLUS loans are now capped at $20,000 per year or $65,000 over the course of an undergraduate school career.
Graduate PLUS loans, which were used to support graduate school education, will be eliminated starting in the 2026-27 school year.
A new unsubsidized loan program is replacing Graduate PLUS. Students can borrow up to $20,500 annually, up to $100,000 over the course of graduate school. Students attending professional schools like medicine or law will be eligible to take out higher loans.
Pell grants: Students in need of a lot of financial aid might qualify for a Pell grant. Unlike loans, these do not have to be repaid.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act expanded Pell grant eligibility to shorter workforce training programs.
The amount of aid you receive depends on your financial need.
After a person submits a FAFSA form, the Department of Education considers several factors like income and other assets and generates a Student Aid Index that determines your financial need. The lower your Student Aid Index, the greater chance of receiving more aid.
Colleges and universities look at factors like a student’s Student Aid Index, how many credits are being taken and tuition costs to decide how much aid a student will receive.
Universities and advocates alike caution against using private loans whenever possible because of concerns about predatory lending, potentially high interest rates and a lack of repayment options and forgiveness.
Interest rates and other conditions of the loan often vary on factors like credit scores. If you need to take out a private loan, try to look at offers from several lenders to pick the best one.
College Goal Wisconsin is hosting events virtually and in several Milwaukee high schools to help students and parents complete the FAFSA form. Any students looking for help with a FAFSA form can attend, even if they don’t attend MPS.
Trone said each student who attends is eligible to win one of 15 $1,000 scholarships.
Families who can’t make it to a help session can use resources on the College Goal Wisconsin website or the FAFSA YouTube page, Trone said.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Veritas High School, 3025 W. Oklahoma Ave. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Riverside University High School, 1615 E. Locust St. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at South Division High School, 1515 W. Lapham Blvd. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Milwaukee School of Languages, 8400 W. Burleigh St. Register here.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Everything you need to know about FAFSA applications is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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