MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin’s flagship university still wants to build a new school of engineering with the current facility badly in need of repairs.
Lawmakers decided against funding the project in the state budget earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean talks are off the table.
About $150 million of the proposed project would come from grants and gifts to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and so far, roughly $110 million has been raised.
However, some people worry if the state doesn’t come through with its share soon, those donors might back away from the deal.
“Every campus comes forward and says we have private sector investment that we would like to use to [help] offset the building, but we still have to prioritize what’s able to be funded and what’s not, so, certainly, we would love to be able to find a way to get to ‘yes’ by having the university work with us on controlling the number of positions they have added,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters during a press conference last week.
After a fire broke out at Engineering Hall last week during routine maintenance work on an air handling unit, State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, feels as though that underscores the need for the investment.
“If you ask each colleague of mine individually, we would have the votes no problem, overwhelmingly, but when it comes to, you know Republicans, they vote with Robin Vos,” Roys said.
Roys, who represents the campus community and serves on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, is worried the stalemate has more to do with politics than price.
“This is [Vos’] attempt to sow a culture war when, in reality, Republicans have been cutting funding for the university to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for decades,” Roys explained.
Vos, on the other hand, said the university has unilaterally added hundreds of positions despite a trend of declining enrollment.
“I think part of the challenge that we see is an over-inflated, bloated UW System at the same time asking us for more money for a building, and we still have the challenge of all of the division, indoctrination, and exclusion that happens with the DEI programs,” Vos said.
He isn’t worried about running out of space either. Vos said there are spots open in engineering programs at both UW-Milwaukee and UW-Platteville.
“I think that we have to constantly remind people that even for those folks who did go to UW-Madison, there is more than one exceptional school as part of the UW System,” Vos added.
“But if we don’t have space for them, and we do not if we [don't] build this engineering building, they are going to go, but they’re not going to go to Platteville,” Roys said. “They are going to go to Purdue, they’re going to go to Duke.”
Over the summer, Republicans, who control the Legislature, rejected spending $197 million to demolish and replace UW-Madison’s engineering building. However, they did approve money in the budget for roughly 60% of the state government and UW projects that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had requested.