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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 9/26/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
October 20, 2005 Remarks by UW System President Kevin P. Reilly UW-Green Bay Founders Dinner
However, the state's commitment to higher education in Wisconsin has dropped precipitously over the last half-decade. This decreased state support has made your collective role as financial advocates for UW-Green Bay and the UW System a lot more crucial to this university's continued success, and let me tell you why.
Many of you may have heard me say that I believe that our job as a public university is to be Wisconsin's premier developer of advanced human potential, of the jobs that employ that potential, and of the flourishing communities that sustain it.
What many do not fully understand is that when the UW System loses state fiscal support, not only is the university limited in what it can do for students and local communities, but the entire state of Wisconsin is inhibited from reaching its full potential.
The economic make-up of this state and this nation, and of the entire world, is shifting. We are seeing the growth of a new "knowledge economy," and the UW System can be a major provider of the well-educated employees who must be ready to take the reins, especially once the baby-boomer generation begins to retire in a few short years. With your support, we can help UW students — these future workers — develop their advanced potential.
Attracting high-paying, knowledge-economy jobs will be important if Wisconsin is to keep pace with our neighbors in terms of per-capita income. It's simple: States with a higher percentage of citizens with four-year college degrees have higher per-capita incomes. Some 80 percent of the UW's 30,000 annual in-state graduates who start as Wisconsin residents stay in Wisconsin to live and work, but budget cuts have forced us to raise tuition, shutting the doors to some of the students who, with a four-year degree, would further contribute to the state's economy. With your support, we can help Wisconsin develop its full economic potential.
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"(We have many exceptional programs) but we can only do so much without proper funding. A high-caliber university system needs high-caliber faculty and staff. Unfortunately, the same budget cuts that have reduced student access have affected our faculty ranks as well. Talented UW faculty members are systematically being poached by other universities that can afford to pay them higher salaries. And despite a small increase in faculty and staff salaries this year, we still do not have the funding necessary to keep a competitive pace. This cannot continue.
If we are to indeed be the premier developer of advanced human potential, we need the highest-quality teachers to assist our students and help them become the leaders of tomorrow. We simply cannot do this "on the cheap."
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As you've heard, your help will be invaluable in future months and years to make certain the UW System is able to fulfill its core missions of teaching, research, and public service. The students, faculty, staff and leaders of our university make world-class contributions every day, and they need your support to fully realize their potential. We must ensure that everyone who wants a degree from a UW campus, and is willing to work hard at it, can get one, and we must be able to provide those students with the highest-quality instructors.
In closing, I ask you to imagine a Wisconsin — and a Green Bay — without its public university. A state and a city without those bright minds and creative talents and innovative ideas and spin-off business and local collaborations — not to mention the jobs and buildings and athletics. I submit that Wisconsin without its public university system would be less competitive, less attractive, less productive, and, well, less fun.
This state with a University of Wisconsin reduced in stature would be less of all those good things we want to be — we need to be. Unless we reverse the state's withdrawal of resources from the UW, that's where we're going. That's where our children and grandchildren will be. Or for some of them, maybe not, because they'll be in Minneapolis, or Chicago, or New York or California, or somewhere else where they've figured out how to use their public university to generate the knowledge-economy talent pool and the high-paying jobs those folks fill in a successful 21st century economy.
We can do that here, with the wonderful platform of UW-Green Bay and the UW System that generations of Wisconsinites who have gone before have bequeathed to us. But it will take an application of will to reinvest in the university that we have not lately been able to muster.
Pardon me for preaching to the choir. You're here tonight because you already know much of what I'm saying. But we need you to sing this tune not only to yourselves, but to others who have not heard it, or who are skeptical, and to our legislators and the Governor. Groups like this will make or break the future of Wisconsin, depending on your success as that kind of choir.
Many, many thanks to each of you for all the efforts you already make as champions of this university, and thank you for listening tonight. I'd be happy to take a few questions.
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