On UW-Madison’s 2015 Diversity Implementation Plan

The two essays that follow present my analysis of the 2015 report on Madison’s Diversity Implementation Plan. The essay immediately below, not previously printed, points out the plan’s additional deficiencies. The earlier and related essay, published previously in the Badger Herald, can be viewed as the first of a two-part series.

Grading Madison’s Flawed Diversity Implementation Plan? Part II

Reposted on October 24, 2015 by W. Lee Hansen

This is a sequel to “Current diversity plan just another dead-end” published in the Badger Herald on April 20, 2015; a shorter version of the Badger Herald essay appeared in the Cap Times, “UW-Madison’s New Diversity Plan Lacks Focus,” on May 3, 2015.

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Reports produced by college and university committees are rarely subject to the scrutiny professors apply to the papers submitted by their students. Even less frequently are these reports “graded” on their content and presentation.

The UW-Madison’s diversity implementation plan issued last April it cries out to be graded. One wonders how it would have been graded if submitted by a student in one of the Comm A English courses required of most entering freshmen.

The report’s title tells it all: Affecting R.E.E.L. Change Retain, Equip, Engage, Lead for Diversity and Inclusion. A Diversity Implementation Plan for the University of Wisconsin Madison (April 2015).

Consider first the content of the plan. It is about implementing “change” in “diversity” and “inclusion.” At the very least, readers would expect the authors to define the two terms that appear in the title. Strangely, their definitions are nowhere to be found. How can readers be expected to understand an implementation plan without knowing the exact meaning of these two vague but widely-used terms?

For a definition of “diversity,” readers must return to the May 2014 report of the Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee, Forward Together: A Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence. Here is that definition:

Diversity: “Individual differences (e.g. personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identify or expression, country of origin, and ability as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning.”

What this definition means has never been made clear.

Understanding the meaning of “inclusion” is even more difficult. The term is not defined in the May 2014 Forward Together…report, even though the combination of terms, “diversity and inclusion,” is mentioned more than 85 times in that report! Nor is the term defined anywhere in the former Chief Diversity Officer’s 198-page report, UW-Madison Strategic Diversity Update (July 2013).

To find a definition of “inclusion” readers must go back to the Inclusive Excellence diversity framework report endorsed by the Board of Regents in March 2009. Here is that definition:

Inclusion: “The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathetic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.”

What programs are proposed that will ensure achievement of these ambitious inclusion outcomes? The plan is completely silent on how to implement the important goal of “inclusion.”

Nor does the implementation plan define in any way the term “Inclusive Excellence” that appears in the title of the May 2014 diversity report, Forward Together: A Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence. To find out what that term means, readers must go back again to the March 2009 Inclusive Excellence diversity framework report. Here is the definition found there:

Inclusive Excellence: “Inclusive Excellence is the umbrella framework under which the UW System and its institutions will move forward in coming years to strategically address equity, diversity and inclusion beyond Plan 2008. The central premise of Inclusive Excellence holds that UW System colleges and universities need to intentionally integrate their diversity efforts into the core aspects of their institutions—including academic priorities, leadership, quality improvement initiatives, decision-making, day-to-day operations, and organizational cultures—in order to maximize their success.”

Even if these three terms had been defined, the implementation plan fails to describe how the May 2014 report’s 18 initiatives will help achieve the multiple goals of “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “inclusive excellence.” Nor does the plan specify the “changes” required to achieve these goals, particularly the goals of “diversity and inclusion.” Any implementation plan should surely address these important matters. What exactly must we do?

Let us return to the title. The attempted cleverness in constructing the plan’s title is likely to confuse readers about its focus. It also leads to a significant grammatical blunder, one that instructors in Comm A English courses would undoubtedly mark with red ink.

Putting aside the perplexing and distracting portion of the title that includes the following: “R.E.E.L. Change Retain, Equip, Engage, Lead,” readers will wonder whether there is a mistake. Shouldn’t the word be “real,” an adjective modifying the word “change,“ as in “real change”? Devoid of its punctuation (i.e., its periods), the word “REEL” makes no sense, as either a noun, “a device on which to wind something,” or as a verb, “to sway or rock back under a blow.” Even if the word “real” had been used, it would have been superfluous.

More serious is the grammatical blunder that leads off the plan’s title. Instead of using the word, “Affecting,” the word should be “Effecting.” The widely-used The American College Dictionary points out that “AFFECT and EFFECT agree in the idea of exerting influence. To AFFECT is to concern, be of interest or importance to; to produce an effect in or upon something: to affect one’s conduct or health. To EFFECT is to accomplish or bring about something: to effect a reconciliation.”

This long-time distinction between “affect” and “effect,” learned by my generation back in the 10th grade, still holds, according to Steven Pinker’s 2014 book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

How ironic I find all this in view of the 2014 Forward Together…report’s self-congratulatory statement about UW-Madison becoming “a leader in the state and nation, in fostering diversity, equity [Oops! “equity” is nowhere defined], and inclusion…”

What a sorry state of affairs. It is difficult to understand how the intellectual horsepower embodied in the more than 100 committee members, some mentioned twice by their affiliations—35 academic staff, 18 administrators, 18 classified staff, 14 undergraduates, 10 faculty, 7 LTE (limited-term employees), 4 graduate students, 3 administrator-faculty, 2 community members, and 1 LTE-faculty-administrator—could produce such an embarrassing document. We can only imagine how much unpaid time this endeavor consumed.

How could this plan be graded? Freshmen enrolled in Comm A English sections are required to turn in 25 pages of revised prose by the end of the semester. The implementation committee—including its distinguished professors and even more numerous academic staff members, many with advanced degrees—had sufficient time and resources to ensure that its report met the standards expected in the papers our students submit in their writing courses.

This diversity implementation plan does not merit a passing grade. It would have to be returned with instructions to rework and clarify its content, and then rewrite it. How sad that the efforts of so many talented people produced such a flawed document.

Posted in Preferential Admissions | Tagged affect, change, diversity, effect, equity, grade, inclusion, Inclusive Excellence, R.E.E.L. Change, Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee, Forward Together, Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, UW-Madison | Leave a comment

 

 

Current diversity plan just another dead-end: Part I

Posted on April 20, 2015 by W. Lee Hansen, from the Apr 21, 2015, The Badger Herald

“You’ve told us about the 18 initiatives and the 40 or so metrics in the diversity and inclusion implementation plan. What should I tell my colleagues about how to focus our individual and group efforts? Which five initiatives should we concentrate on?”

That is the essence of the question I heard posed by a department chairman at the first of the eight recently scheduled listening sessions on the new University of Wisconsin diversity framework.

The chief diversity officer’s response did not answer that question. The department chair did not press for an answer. Nobody else did either. Next question, please.

The new diversity implementation plan document is the product of intensive labors over the past few months by eight committees/groups composed of 112 individuals: 35 academic staff, 18 administrators, 18 classified staff, 14 undergraduates, 10 faculty, seven LTE (limited-term employee) administrators, four graduate students, three administrators-faculty, two community members and one LTE-faculty-administrator.

What began with a list of 70 initiatives was eventually pared down to 18 initiatives. These initiatives are to be implemented in phases, with some already underway and others to be started in the coming years.

What is sadly missing are connections to past and ongoing efforts to push forward on the goals of diversity. More attention is given to the cosmetics of the document, as evidenced in its too-clever title: “Affecting R.E.E.L. Change (Retain, Equip, Engage, Lead) for Diversity and Inclusion.”

What is the direct connection between the new report’s 18 initiatives and the May 2014 approved report of the Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee? That report, “Forward Together: A Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence,” listed 30 recommendations that would involve almost 80 campus units and approximately 175 “partnerships” to push forward its recommendations. If anything looked like an implement plan, this was it. But how these 30 recommendations and the 18 implementation initiatives are linked remains a mystery.

Then there are the between 50 to 60 long-established Minority and Disadvantaged Student programs. Every year the Office of Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer prepares a spreadsheet indicating the sources and dollar expenditures for each of these programs, the FTE (full-time equivalent) employee count, and the allocation of these resources to promote recruitment, retention and graduation of minority students. Again, how these programs are linked to the new implementation plan receives no attention.

Next is the “UW-Madison Strategic Diversity Update” (Draft 1.0 July 2013) prepared by former Chief Diversity Officer Damon Williams and circulated only days before he resigned. That 198-page report describes 181 “University Department/Organizational Program Initiatives” that are identified by an alphabet soup of acronyms. The content of this report, compiled by the CDO staff, described programs and initiatives “to provide the campus community with a broad look at the numerous activities taking place institutionally. It is truly impressive!” Impressive? Perhaps. But, again, what is the connection?

Despite the “absence” of a formally-adopted diversity plan in the five years following the end of Madison’s previous diversity plan, called Plan 2008, an open records request turned up some interesting information. It revealed that then-Chief Diversity Officer Williams, working quietly behind the scenes, with the support of then-Chancellor Biddy Martin and then-Provost Deluca but without informing the faculty, began implementing several key goals of the Inclusive Excellence Diversity plan that had been “endorsed” by the UW System Board of Regents in 2009.

So, what does the campus have to work with? The new 2015 implementation plan’s 18 initiatives and approximately 40 metrics, the 30 recommendations plus the many involvements and partnerships identified in the May 2014 Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee, the 181 programs and initiatives from the 2013 Strategic Update report, the more than 50 long-standing Minority and Disadvantaged (M&D) Student Programs, plus the uncounted Inclusive Excellence programs initiated beginning in 2009.

How do all of these efforts fit together? No hints can be found in any of these documents. It is as if each group that worked on these various plans felt, to use the old phrase, that they needed “to reinvent the wheel.” Unfortunately, the “wheels” don’t match. Despite a constant “spinning of the wheels,” there is little forward progress.

What are we left with? Five unrelated reports that would be the laughing stock if put forth by effective leaders in business and public agencies. That some legislators wonder about UW’s spending of taxpayer funds should come as no surprise.

Particularly embarrassing are the self-congratulatory statements found in these reports, for example, through implementing this new plan UW can become “a leader in the state and nation in fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion through active participation of all constituents of the UW-Madison community.”

Let’s cut out the bragging about what could happen. Better to toot our horn after we have something substantial to show for it. Modesty is a much neglected virtue.

Posted in Preferential Admissions | Tagged Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee, Affecting R.E.E.L. Change, Diversity, Forward Together, Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, inclusion, UW-Madison | Leave a comment

 

Other 2015 Essays Posted on my Website:   http:/www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wlhansen/

UW should use all available means to create a better campus climate. Posted on January 30, 2015. The Badger Herald.

UW students stuck with cost that taxpayers used to cover. Posted on March 8, 2015. The Wisconsin State Journal.

Enlist Scott Walker in the ‘Right-on-Crime’ movement. Posted on May 11, 2015. The Cap Times.

Faculty Tenure: Improve It. Don’t Remove It. Posted on August 18, 2015 on NAS.org, AAUP.org, and on August 30, 2015, The Cap Times.

Why Act 55’s changes don’t make sense for UW-Madison. Posted on October 9, 2015. The Cap Times.

Lest We Forget—Memorial Day Reflections: May 2015. Posted on May 25, 2015.

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Why Act 55’s changes don’t make sense for UW

The UW-Madison Faculty Senate as well as the Board of Regents are grappling with the challenge of responding to the provisions of the Legislature’s Act 55. That legislation calls for wholesale change in policies that deal with tenure, post-tenure review, faculty governance, and termination of academic programs and departments.

What surprises me is the absence of any evidence demonstrating that these policies are not working effectively and need to be changed. If damning evidence of deficiencies exists, we would surely have heard of it by now.

Off-hand comments that professors should teach more or they should not have jobs for life are complaints. They say nothing about whether these long-standing policies should be changed.

Key to understanding the events of the past few months is the governor’s release of his 2015-17 budget. It proposed an unprecedented rewriting the mission of the UW System. It called on the UW System to focus on “meeting the state’s workforce needs.” It called for eliminating the “Wisconsin Idea” that describes the UW System’s commitment to serving the people of the state. It called for casting aside the goals that encourage the UW System to engage in the “search for truth” and seek to “improve the human condition.”

These proposed mission statement changes provoked a huge outcry. They were quickly described by the governor as the result of a “drafting error” and later the result of “simple miscommunication.” The governor had no alternative but to withdraw his proposed rewrite of the UW System’s mission.

My guess is that the changes in mission, most importantly the goal of “meeting the state’s workforce needs,” led to questions during its drafting about how to implement that goal. Three obvious answers show up in Act 55. Eliminate or scale back programs that do not contribute to that goal. Eliminate restrictions on terminating tenured faculty in these programs. Eliminate the role of faculty in making decisions on these policies.

When the governor had to back down on his recasting of the mission statement, the rationale disappeared for changing existing policies on tenure, terminations and academic unit closures. Unfortunately, none of Act 55’s provisions were eliminated as they should have been. This means the policies needed to implement the governor’s workforce plan remain intact.

With enactment of Act 55, the Board of Regents and its task force, as well as the University Committee and its ad hoc committee, have been charged with deciding what course of action to take. Numerous senators and faculty members are contributing to this effort, including PROFS (a nonprofit, voluntary UW-Madison faculty organization) as well as members of the local American Association of University Professors chapter and the local American Federation of Teachers chapter.

The Faculty Senate’s report to the Board of Regents should make clear the following. First, evidence is lacking to justify the changes called for in Act 55. Second, Act 55 offers no assurance its provisions will make the UW System “more efficient, more effective, and more accountable.”

Third, Act 55 may produce just the opposite effect. Its provisions will push the UW System toward the governor’s goal of “meeting the state’s workforce needs” while it must continue pursuing its unchanged mission, “to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing in students heightened intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise and a sense of purpose.” Since it can’t do both, something has to give. Let’s make it the governor’s never-defined goal of “meeting state’s workforce needs.”

Finally, the Faculty Senate’s report should insist that the Board of Regents adhere to the “gold standard” policies of the American Association of University Professors, policies that former UW faculty members helped create and that have made the UW System the envy of the academic world.

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Lest We Forget—Memorial Day Reflections: May 2015

Honoring Memorial Day faces ever greater challenges—the proliferating array of activities that compete with the purpose of that day, to honor those who fought and died fighting this country’s wars. Among these activities here in Madison are the weekend’s “World’s Largest Brat Fest,” the Vilas Zoo Park’s event “Feeding the Goats,” the “Madison Marathon,” and lots of “fun” activities at nearby Wisconsin Dells.

Then there is the Memorial Day ceremony today at the State Street entrance to the Capitol. It begins with a VFW band concert at 9:30 a.m., followed by the 10 a.m. program that features the traditional reading of General Logan’s General Order #11 that established Memorial Day, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, plus comments from Wisconsin former Governor, Jim Doyle. In addition, family members of the 274 Madison-area veterans known to have died within the last year will be recognized.

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Out of respect for the many Americans who fought and died fighting this country’s wars, I am always drawn to attend Memorial Day events. These gatherings are especially meaningful for two reasons.

As a child I remember our Memorial Day family drives to a little cemetery located a mile north of the crossroads known as North Cape, located on Highway 45, about 20 miles west of Racine, where we lived. We made these trips to decorate the graves of my mother’s Norwegian father, George Spillum, who as a young man settled there in the late 1850s and later her mother, Anna Setterlun, who arrived as a nine year-old child from Sweden in 1869. These annual excursions excited us children because car trips in the late 1930s were a real luxury. While at the cemetery and before a brief outdoor service began, we placed flowers on the graves of our grandparents as well as our great grandparents who died many years earlier.

Though Decoration Day, as it was then known, sought to commemorate the Civil War dead, it had become a national holiday to honor the dead, whether or not they had served in the military. If any Civil War dead lay buried in the North Cape cemetery, I don’t recall. Fortunately, our grandfather did not enlist in the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment, known as the Scandinavian (mostly Norwegian) Regiment, which suffered severe casualties. Among them was its Norwegian commander, Colonel Heg, whose statue stands at the southeastern corner of the Capitol Square in Madison.

The other reason is to honor the many members of our families who served in the nation’s wars—World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. My Dad, William Hansen, served in the Navy during World War I, and two uncles, Miles Hulett and Arthur Spillum fought with the 32nd Division in France; Sally’s father, James Porch, led an infantry company through the fierce fighting in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in 1918; three of her uncles served in the Army, one of them a doctor, Donald McPhail, who was gassed in France and died of its effects several years after the war’s end, by then married and the father of two small children.

Skipping to World War II, an older brother of ours, Jim, who served with the 34th Division, was killed in Italy in October 1943. Several Hansen cousins served overseas, one of them, also named Lee Hansen, in far-off China, and his brother Roger, in the U.S. On Sally’s side, her brother, Dick Porch, flew bombing missions over the Polesti oil fields; a cousin, Don McPhail, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and suffered what would now be called post-traumatic stress syndrome; another cousin, Charles Chadwick, was killed when his B-17 was shot down over Germany; and still another cousin, a young woman, Carolyn McPhail, served in the Women’s Army Corps. The man Carolyn later married, Eddie Wiertelak, had been scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan in Fall 1945. The man Sally’s sister later married served in the Army Airforce. Several other cousins and boyfriends or husbands of less close relatives also served. Between WWII and the Korean War, a cousin, Robert Fridlington, served in Korea.

On to the Korean War. My two younger brothers and I were drafted into the Army but, fortunately, were not sent to Korea. I trained at Camp McCoy, was transferred to Fifth Army Headquarters in Chicago, and then volunteered to join the American Military Mission for Aid to Turkey where I served for a year and one-half as a military adviser. During my basic and advanced training at Camp McCoy, a number of enlisted men and officers from the National Guard unit in which I served were ordered to Korea where several of them were killed or wounded.

My youngest brother, Harlan, drafted in 1952, twice had orders for Korea but each time they were rescinded, the first time to attend an advanced artillery training school and the second time to stay on as an instructor. However, some of his colleagues in basic training were sent to Korea, and it was reported back to him that several were killed by “friendly fire.” It seems that the many hills in Korea all looked the same. Pilots had to drop their bombs somewhere and in a number of cases they were dropped on our own troops. How sad. My brother, Forest, who was drafted in 1954 after the Korean Conflict ended, spent his time serving at SHAPE Headquarters in Paris; in addition to his regular duties, he traveled all over Europe as a member of the SHAPE basketball team. Several cousins also served; one of them, newly married, Donald Ebert, was killed fighting in Korea. In the late 1950s, still another cousin, Mike Spillum, served on a Navy submarine in the Pacific Ocean.

When I think of this country’s wars, these people are always in my mind. They deserve to be honored, both the living and the dead, and taking part in Memorial Day services is my one small way of doing so.

I usually attend the Memorial Day events at the State Capitol building here in Madison, something I will do again this year. Last year, I decided to drive the 80 miles to North Cape, located about 20 miles west of Racine. I drove to the old North Cape cemetery where a 7:45 a.m. Memorial Day service was scheduled. Arriving early, I took time to visit the graves of our ancestors. The worn gravestones of our great grandparents, the last of whom died a century ago, had been replaced a few years ago. The gravestones of our grandparents are so weathered that the inscriptions are difficult to make out; soon those gravestones will have to be replaced. Then I wandered about the cemetery, noting the names of families my mother and grandmother frequently mentioned when they talked about the “old days” in North Cape.

The Memorial Day ceremony was not an elaborate one. The American Legion Honor Guard from nearby Waterford assembled along the front edge of the cemetery. They faced the assembled crowd of about 35 local people, ranging from small children to one ancient man who must surely have been a WWII veteran.

The ceremony began with the calling of the roll, the names of the probably 15 local veterans who died in the past year. As each name was called out, the response was “Not Present.” The leader of the group then read from General John Logan’s 1868 Proclamation establishing Decoration Day to honor the Civil War dead. The Lutheran minister, from the Norwegian Lutheran Church (established in 1850) across the road, quoted from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and followed with a reading from the Bible. The color guard then presented arms and fired the customary salute. This was followed by the sound of “Taps” coming from two buglers, one with the honor guard and the other echoing the sound from a distant corner of the cemetery.

The ceremony proved to be a moving one. As always, it left me more than misty-eyed. What a sad but still glorious day, to honor the many who died far too soon.

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Enlist Scott Walker in the ‘Right-on-Crime’ movement

May 11, 2015
The Cap Times

Gov. Scott Walker could solidify his conservative credentials by signing on with the “Right on Crime” movement touted by archconservative Grover Norquist. That movement seeks to reduce prison incarceration rates, cut prison system costs, and lighten the toll taken on families, lives and neighborhoods.

Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Jeb Bush have already signed on to the initiative, as have a number of governors and dozens of other conservatives.

The “Right on Crime” movement, though started by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and promoted by conservatives, should also have strong appeal to liberals and everybody else.

The challenge is to roll back the adverse effects of “truth-in-sentencing” laws and “minimum mandatory sentences” that over the past several decades caused prison populations and prison costs to skyrocket.

Wisconsin’s rate of imprisonment is now nine times greater than in the early 1970s. It is more than twice as large as it was just two decades ago even though the violent crime rate has remained relatively constant.

Adult corrections have gobbled up an increasing share of the state’s tax revenue. In the governor’s 2015-17 budget, Corrections’ general purpose revenue expenditures will exceed by one-third the general purpose revenue going to the entire UW System.

The governor has shown little recent interest in the state’s prison system. His position is not surprising. Back in the late 1990s while a member of the state Legislature, he took the lead in being tough on crime by pushing successfully for a “truth-in-sentencing” law.

For Walker to come out now in support of the “Right on Crime” movement could be viewed as another Walker flip-flop that might injure his presidential ambitions. But it could also be seen as a sign of the governor’s personal growth and willingness to base his views on evidence rather than ideology. It could also be seen as a bold move that recognizes the large human and budgetary costs of the now-floundering tough-on-crime stance.

Among Wisconsinites, there is growing sentiment favoring prison reform. Leading this effort is an organization called WISDOM, a statewide coalition of faith-based organizations pushing for social justice. Among its prominent current concerns is prison reform and reducing the high rate of incarceration for African-Americans.

In October 2014, WISDOM issued a blueprint for ending mass incarceration in Wisconsin. It called for efforts to keep people from entering prison, provide justice for the people already in prison, and help people who were once in prison stay out of prison.

Walker could have incorporated one or all of these goals in his 2015-17 budget. Doing so could have marked the beginning of a concerted effort to reduce, without endangering public safety, the state’s $1.2 billion budget devoted to the Department of Corrections.

Walker’s budget does virtually nothing to rein in this cost or reduce the number of prison inmates.

Wisconsin’s adult correction system, which now houses more than 22,000 prisoners, is expensive. The annual “operational cost” per inmate is $33,000. With the addition of administrative costs, the per-inmate cost rises to $38,000 per year.

— This $38,000 figure is only $5,000 less than Wisconsin’s annual per capita income of $43,000.

— The $38,000 figure is more than 12 times the annual per-student level of taxpayer support of approximately $3,000 for undergraduate education in the UW System.

— Taxpayer support for four years of college in the University of Wisconsin System totals about $12,000. Taxpayer support for four years in Wisconsin prisons comes to more than $150,000.

— Most UW System students graduate in four years. The average (median) prison sentence is longer, six and one-half years, and hence even more expensive.

Several measures for reducing prison costs and the number of prison inmates could be implemented quickly. One is to direct parole boards to consider for release the nearly 3,000 inmates who have long been eligible for parole. Another is to institute a more generous policy in granting pardons.

Fully funding the state’s Treatment Alternatives and Diversions Fund could keep several thousand people out of prison each year and many more from ever going to jail. Implementing successful approaches used in other states to handle parole violations could reduce the number of former inmates sent back to prison again.

If Walker’s proposal to cut the UW System budget is a “bold” move, why not propose a more enlightened “bold” move — that of reforming Wisconsin’s expensive and dysfunctional prison system?

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Letter to the editor: Current diversity plan just another dead-end

Apr 21, 2015
The Badger Herald

“You’ve told us about the 18 initiatives and the 40 or so metrics in the diversity and inclusion implementation plan. What should I tell my colleagues about how to focus our individual and group efforts? Which five initiatives should we concentrate on?”

That is the essence of the question I heard posed by a department chairman at the first of the eight recently scheduled listening sessions on the new University of Wisconsin diversity framework.

The chief diversity officer’s response did not answer that question. The department chair did not press for an answer. Nobody else did either. Next question, please.

The new diversity implementation plan document is the product of intensive labors over the past few months by eight committees/groups composed of 112 individuals: 35 academic staff, 18 administrators, 18 classified staff, 14 undergraduates, 10 faculty, seven LTE (limited-term employee) administrators, four graduate students, three administrators-faculty, two community members and one LTE-faculty-administrator.

What began with a list of 70 initiatives was eventually pared down to 18 initiatives. These initiatives are to be implemented in phases, with some already underway and others to be started in the coming years.

What is sadly missing are connections to past and ongoing efforts to push forward on the goals of diversity. More attention is given to the cosmetics of the document, as evidenced in its too-clever title: “Affecting R.E.E.L. Change (Retain, Equip, Engage, Lead) for Diversity and Inclusion.”

What is the direct connection between the new report’s 18 initiatives and the May 2014 approved report of the Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee? That report, “Forward Together: A Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence,” listed 30 recommendations that would involve almost 80 campus units and approximately 175 “partnerships” to push forward its recommendations. If anything looked like an implement plan, this was it. But how these 30 recommendations and the 18 implementation initiatives are linked remains a mystery.

Then there are the between 50 to 60 long-established Minority and Disadvantaged Student programs. Every year the Office of Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer prepares a spreadsheet indicating the sources and dollar expenditures for each of these programs, the FTE (full-time equivalent) employee count, and the allocation of these resources to promote recruitment, retention and graduation of minority students. Again, how these programs are linked to the new implementation plan receives no attention.

Next is the “UW-Madison Strategic Diversity Update” (Draft 1.0 July 2013) prepared by former Chief Diversity Officer Damon Williams and circulated only days before he resigned. That 198-page report describes 181 “University Department/Organizational Program Initiatives” that are identified by an alphabet soup of acronyms. The content of this report, compiled by the CDO staff, described programs and initiatives “to provide the campus community with a broad look at the numerous activities taking place institutionally. It is truly impressive!” Impressive? Perhaps. But, again, what is the connection?

Despite the “absence” of a formally-adopted diversity plan in the five years following the end of Madison’s previous diversity plan, called Plan 2008, an open records request turned up some interesting information. It revealed that then-Chief Diversity Officer Williams, working quietly behind the scenes, with the support of then-Chancellor Biddy Martin and then-Provost Deluca but without informing the faculty, began implementing several key goals of the Inclusive Excellence Diversity plan that had been “endorsed” by the UW System Board of Regents in 2009.

So, what does the campus have to work with? The new 2015 implementation plan’s 18 initiatives and approximately 40 metrics, the 30 recommendations plus the many involvements and partnerships identified in the May 2014 Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee, the 181 programs and initiatives from the 2013 Strategic Update report, the more than 50 long-standing Minority and Disadvantaged (M&D) Student Programs, plus the uncounted Inclusive Excellence programs initiated beginning in 2009.

How do all of these efforts fit together? No hints can be found in any of these documents. It is as if each group that worked on these various plans felt, to use the old phrase, that they needed “to reinvent the wheel.” Unfortunately, the “wheels” don’t match. Despite a constant “spinning of the wheels,” there is little forward progress.

What are we left with? Five unrelated reports that would be the laughing stock if put forth by effective leaders in business and public agencies. That some legislators wonder about UW’s spending of taxpayer funds should come as no surprise.

Particularly embarrassing are the self-congratulatory statements found in these reports, for example, through implementing this new plan UW can become “a leader in the state and nation in fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion through active participation of all constituents of the UW-Madison community.”

Let’s cut out the bragging about what could happen. Better to toot our horn after we have something substantial to show for it. Modesty is a much neglected virtue.

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Understanding the effects of Governor Walker’s UW System budget cut on the cost of instruction and tuition

March 10, 2015
WISCAPE

Reactions to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget cut of $300 million for the UW System in the next biennium, while strong in their opposition, have not been clearly focused. To better understand the effects of these cuts, it is helpful to have an understanding of instructional costs and their relation to tuition. Instructional costs are the costs of educating undergraduate students, including, for example: faculty/staff compensation, student services (such as advising), and the operation of campus libraries.

The relationship between instructional costs and tuition
Views on how to finance instructional costs have shifted over the years. A formal relationship between tuition and instructional costs was established in the mid-1950s. Beginning in 1955-57, academic year tuition for resident, undergraduate students was pegged at 20 percent of instructional costs, or $90; in about 1970 it rose to 25 percent of instructional costs. Tuition increased slowly after that but began rising more rapidly in the 1990s, and even more rapidly over the past decade. In 2004-05, student tuition accounted for more than 50 percent of instructional costs, and in 2013-14 it accounted for 71 percent. This shift explains the 64 percent increase over the past decade in resident undergraduate tuition, which rose from $4,415 in 2004-05 to $7,232 in 2013-14. (See the See the top panel of Table 2.)

The past 10 years has seen an accelerated shift away from taxpayer funding of the UW System to much greater reliance on students and their parents to finance the costs of undergraduate education. (See Table 1.)

An interesting question to ask is this: What would the 2013-14 tuition charge have been if the 2004-05 split in the cost of instruction had been maintained? Tuition would have risen to $5,297, a 20 percent increase instead of 64 percent. The GPR share would also have risen by 20 percent to $4,889, instead of decreasing by 28 percent to $2,954. (See the bottom panel of Table 2.) What a striking difference!

What readers may not fully appreciate is the slow increase in the undergraduate cost of instruction in the UW System. The cost of instruction rose by 20 percent over the decade. When adjusted for price-level increases over this same period, using the GDP implicit price deflator, we find that the real or constant-dollar increase in the cost of instruction remained constant. That the real costs of instruction did not rise over the decade is a tribute to UW-Madison faculty, staff, and administrators for holding down instructional costs. Expressed in another way, for being highly efficient in their provision of top-quality undergraduate instruction.

The effect of adjusting for the price level change from 2004-05 to 2013-14 is shown in Table 3. With a price level change of 20 percent, the 2004-05 cost of instruction must be expressed in 2013-14 dollars. Doing so pushes the cost of instruction figure to $10,188, which is virtually identical to the 2013-14 figure of $10,186. The 2004-05 figures for the GPR share and the tuition share must also be adjusted. This pushes the GPR share to to $4,890 and the tuition share to $5,208. This last figure should be $5,298!

The differences between the price-adjusted 2004-05 GPR share and the 2013-14 share comes to $1,934. This figure is identical to the difference of $1,934 for the tuition share. What distinguishes the two figures is that the GPR share is negative and the tuition share is positive. In other words, the dollar decline in the GPR share is offset by the dollar increase in the tuition share. The percentages changes are roughly comparable. The larger percentage change for the GPR share is due to its slightly small share of the cost of instruction.

Likely effects of Gov. Walker’s proposed budget cuts on instructional costs and students
With this background, what will be the likely effects of the proposed $150 million annual reduction in the UW System budget? For illustrative purposes, I am assuming that the full effects of the budget reduction will fall on undergraduate instruction; this means that the effects of the budget cut estimated here will be a bit on the high side, because these calculations ignore the costs of graduate student instruction.

The size of Gov. Walker’s proposed budget reduction on the dollar amount of the GPR share is approximately $1,000. This $1,000 figure is derived by dividing the $150 million budget reduction by the approximately 150,000 students enrolled in the UW System. As a consequence, GPR support is further reduced from 29 to 21 percent, that is, from $2,954 to $1,954.

This reduction of $1,000 in the GPR share means that without an opportunity to offset that amount by raising tuition, the cost of instruction must also decline by $1,000 — from $10,186 to $9,186. (See Table 4.) With this reduction in the cost of instruction, the tuition share rises from 71 to 79 percent even though the dollar amount of the tuition charge remains the same.

How any institution could accommodate what amounts to a more than 10 percent reduction in its expenditures during the course of a single year is difficult to fathom. In fact, decisions on actual spending reductions could not be made until late this spring after the state legislature approves the budget and it is signed by the governor. By then, UW System campuses will have formalized their instructional plans for the 2015-16 academic year, meaning that the schedules showing what courses will be taught and who will teach them are in place, and students will already have signed up for fall semester courses.

If the $150 million budget cut for 2015-16 is enacted, instructional programs will have to be scaled back. This will endanger the plans of juniors and seniors to graduate in four years and join the Wisconsin labor force. Newly admitted students may have to be turned away because of course cancellations. Thousands of students and parents will experience the disruptive effects of such a precipitous budget cut.

Even if the first-year reduction is cut in half, by 50 percent, to $75 million, there would be major problems in adapting quickly to what is still a substantial cut.

What if political pressures cause the governor and legislature to relent on their freezing of student tuition for the 2015-16 academic year? What if they AGREE that tuition could be raised for the next academic year to replace the governor’s reduced GPR support? For the UW System to maintain funding for costs of instruction at the current level, average tuition would need to increase from $7,232 to $8,232 — a 12 percent increase. (See Table 5.)

Though this might solve the UW System’s budget problem, it would negatively affect students. Without any increases in need-based student financial aid, some unknown but sizeable number of students, because of their limited personal and family resources, would be unable to enroll at UW System institutions next fall. Most likely, the composition of the student body would change, with a larger proportion of students coming from more affluent families who could afford the new, higher tuition charge.

Closing off opportunities for bright young people from lower-income families to participate in higher education would not support the state’s economic growth agenda.

The governor’s budget proposal means that the entire UW System is operating under a cloud of uncertainty. While giving the UW System public authority status is likely to have some favorable effects, the short-run costs in the form of $150 million annual budget cuts seem too high a price to pay. Beyond that are many unanticipated consequences, both short-run and long-run, that need careful examination. Let us hope that legislators realize this and take the time to consult with UW System faculty and administration about the bill’s effects. Let us hope they give Walker’s budget bill the careful scrutiny it deserves.

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UW students stuck with cost that taxpayers used to cover

March 8, 2015
The Wisconsin State Journal

Lost in discussions of Gov. Scott Walker’s $300 million budget cut for the University of Wisconsin System is how the sharing of the costs of instruction will be shifted from taxpayers to students and their parents in tuition increases.

Back in the late 1950s, an agreement was reached setting UW tuition at 20 percent of the cost of instruction for resident undergraduate students. By the mid-1990s that percentage had risen to about 35 percent. It continued to climb, reaching 52 percent in 2004-05 and then 71 percent in 2013-14.

If Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cut is implemented, the student share will rise to almost 80 percent in 2015-16. Under the influence of Wisconsin’s recent governors, the state’s historic commitment to affordable undergraduate education in the System’s 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year centers has been steadily whittled away.

The looming 10 percent reduction in the cost of instruction will seriously jeopardize the ability of the System to continue providing quality undergraduate education.

The impact of this shift in financing shows up most clearly in the sharing of the costs of instruction. With the rapid increase in the student share of the cost of instruction, tuition rose from $4,415 to $7,232. This is a 64 percent increase. Meanwhile, the taxpayer share fell from $4,075 to $2,954, a decline of 28 percent.

In looking back, it is the dramatic increase in tuition that has received so much attention. Little has been said about the sharp reductions in taxpayer support as an important reason for the large tuition increases.

The cost of instruction, which is financed by taxpayers and student tuition, rose by about 20 percent from 2004-05 to 2013-14, from $8,490 to $10,186. But once price level increases are taken into account, the inflation-adjusted cost of instruction remained essentially unchanged.

What happened? Gubernatorial and legislative efforts succeeded in reducing taxpayer expenditures on the System. The Board of Regents and the System succeeded in raising tuition enough to maintain the quality of undergraduate instruction, as indicated by the unchanged, constant dollar cost of instruction.

The governor’s proposed $150 million budget cut for 2015-16 amounts to a roughly $1,000 reduction in the resources available to support the cost of instruction. This figure is based on the roughly 150,000 Wisconsin resident students enrolled in System institutions.

If the budget cut is enacted, the cost of instruction will be forced down from $10,186 to $9,186. With the governor’s freeze on tuition, there will be no way to offset this decline in instructional cost.

As a consequence, the share of the cost of instruction paid by students will rise from its 71 percent share in 2013-14 (data for 2014-15 are not yet available) to almost 80 percent in 2015-16. The taxpayer share will have dropped to an all-time low of about 20 percent.

This means the 20 percent student/80 percent taxpayer sharing of the instructional cost in the 1950s and 1960s will be reversed, with an almost 80 percent student/20 percent taxpayer sharing of the costs in 2015-16.

The prospect of this massive budget cut being enacted has escalated uncertainty among students, faculty and staff.

Campuses are already deciding for the coming academic year which courses will be taught and who will teach them. Students will soon have to decide which courses they need to meet their graduation requirements.

If courses must be cancelled later this spring to reduce the budget in 2015-16, the plans of many students to graduate in four years will be jeopardized.

Additional problems will arise because many faculty members and academic staff work under contracts that cannot be terminated on short notice. More important for the reputation of the System, and particularly UW-Madison, a number of outstanding faculty and staff will very likely begin receiving generous salary offers from other research universities and be poised to leave for greener pastures.

Two final points. Too often the proponents of new policy proposals, and this seems to be the case with Gov. Walker, fail to recognize or even acknowledge the unintended consequences of their proposals. Rushing through major policy changes without adequate public discussion is not a recipe for promoting change that serves the public interest.

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Letter to the Editor: UW should use all available means to create a better campus climate

January 30, 2015
The Badger Herald

Lack of evidence about the state of Madison’s “campus climate” proved to be the real surprise at Tuesday afternoon’s Diversity and Inclusion discussion. Remarks by Chancellor Rebecca Blank, Dean of Students Lori Berquam and Interim Chief Diversity Officer Patrick Sims made it sound as if the campus climate is worsening. But is that really the case?

No answer was provided. Instead attendees were told to ask the question: What can I do right now to improve the campus climate? Nobody offered a definition of the term “campus climate.” Nor did anyone offer concrete guidance on how students, staff and faculty could respond to this call for action. Telling everyone they should help make the campus “the best it can be” is not very helpful.

Developing suggestions about what people might do could have been informed by the results of a UW campus climate survey conducted by a consulting firm in 2011. The results of that survey are contained in a more than 300-page report completed in July 2012. Strangely, that report and its appendices can be accessed only by people who have a UW Net ID and password.

This wide-ranging report surveyed students, faculty and staff in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, it being viewed as a microcosm of UW. Although only 8 percent of students and 29 percent of employees (faculty, academic staff, classified staff, etc.) responded, the survey results are described by the UW Office of Academic Planning and Institutional Research as being “relevant for UW as a whole.”

Three-fourths of all respondents viewed the overall campus climate as “comfortable” or “very comfortable.” Eighty-three percent of the students gave similar responses.

Approximately 20-25 percent of respondents said they “personally experienced offensive, hostile, exclusionary or intimidating conduct in the past two years.” For the disabled, the figure was higher, 38 percent, while for students the figure was 15 percent. For people of color and whites, their percentage figures were approximately the same at 22 and 21 percent.

When respondents were asked if the inappropriate conduct was due to their gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability status, the numbers answering affirmatively were 45 percent for women, 44 percent for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer,” 29 percent for people of color and 24 percent for the disabled.

Much more can be learned from this report, particularly about what kinds of conduct proved to be most inappropriate. This information could have provided useful guidance to attendees on how best to improve Madison’s campus climate.

Why this expensive report has not received greater attention is perplexing. Why the Dean of Students and the Chief Diversity Officer failed to draw on this report needs to be explained.

It remains unclear whether any of the report’s recommendations have been implemented. If they have been implemented, has the campus climate improved as a result? If so, by how much? If not, why not? Why initiate studies of this kind if their findings are to be ignored?

W. Lee Hansen (wlhansen@wisc.edu) is a professor emeritus in the economics department.

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Wisconsin won’t admit it, but its new egalitarian policy leads to grading quotas

December 17, 2014
The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

In July, I wrote about the pressure that University of Wisconsin officials have been exerting on the faculty for greater “equity” on campus.

My “Madness in Madison” essay pointed out that university administrators are so caught up in egalitarian groupthink that they want to reduce or eliminate differences in students’ choice of majors and in the distribution of grades.

That essay elicited a defensive reaction from the university. Chief Diversity Officer Patrick Sims stated in a July 22, 2014 press release that UW’s diversity plan does not entail “a quota system for apportioning grades by race.”

Bringing up quotas, however, is a distraction from the plan’s impact—a red herring.

UW-Madison’s new diversity plan, “A Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence,” calls for the elimination of the grade gap, but in a veiled way that never uses the word “quota.” Unfortunately, the result will hardly be any different than if it did.

A bit of history will set the stage.

UW-Madison has been moving toward egalitarian grading since 2008 when the university began reporting to departments and instructors the rates of D, F, and drop grades by gender, first-generation college status, and targeted minority status.

That sent a message to the faculty that they’d better pay close attention to low grades for students in certain groups.

The 2009 UW System’s “Inclusive Excellence Framework” insisted upon “proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution . . . and in the distribution of grades.”

In plain English, this meant that the university was determined to have equal grades for all groups.

In fall 2009, the College of Letters and Science pushed further with a study of grading practices in five introductory courses. Its title was revealing: “Grade Gap/Future Gap: Addressing Racial Disparities in L&S [Letters & Science] Introductory Courses.” Departments were instructed to implement strategic action plans to “eliminate racial grade gaps by 2014.”

This targeted five introductory courses: Chemistry 103, Communication Arts 100, English 100, Mathematics 112, and Psychology 202.

Putting an even sharper point on the administration’s desires, the report explained, “. . . these courses have something in common, sharp disparities in grade outcomes by race. In all courses targeted minority students achieve lower grades than non-targeted students at similar preparation levels. In each course, targeted minority students receive more of the low grades and fewer of the high grades.”

No, that doesn’t explicitly demand grade quotas, but the unsubtle point can’t be missed.

Furthermore, to ensure “steady annual improvements,” the dean would create incentives and an accountability system.

The people who teach those introductory courses, mostly teaching assistants and instructional academic staff, are quite vulnerable to administrative pressure because they are on limited-term contracts. They are apt to decide that giving each individual the grade he or she earned is less important than assigning grades so that there is little or no gap between groups.

Rather than adjusting grades, however, the university suggests that faculty members who teach those courses should “discover pedagogical strategies that reach targeted and non-targeted students with equal effectiveness” to reduce the achievement gap.

Resorting to faddish education-speak, the university suggests that the faculty use “proactive multicultural competence” to make their teaching more effective for the targeted students.

Efforts to eliminate the grade gap are being intensified under UW-Madison’s “Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence” plan. Its Recommendation 1.5 calls for a “reduction in the achievement gap.”

Madison is already responding to that recommendation. The university’s Delta Academic Excellence Initiative worked with faculty and staff at its 2014 Fall Retreat to promote “impactful instructional practices” in key courses where there are “adverse academic outcomes,” meaning the results are unequal by racial group. The Initiative’s objective is the elimination racial grade gaps in those courses.

The “achievement gap” is simply another name for the inability of targeted minority students to earn good enough grades in their introductory courses that they will be able to enroll in “high demand majors” such as STEM majors and computer science.

Those ideas about “pedagogical strategies” may sound nice, but they’re utopian. Professors teaching those introductory courses (or any others) can’t wave a magic wand to come up with a teaching method that enables the “targeted” students in, say, chemistry, to learn the subject just as well as the non-targeted students. There simply isn’t some different, more effective way of teaching chemistry to minority students than teaching it to white and Asian students.

Faculty members might attempt or at least say they’ve attempted to discover and use methods that make all student groups learn the material equally well. In the end, however, they will do the safe thing and adjust grades so that the gap disappears. That, after all, is the one thing the university can measure.

So, while UW doesn’t have a de facto grade quota policy, its directives to faculty members will lead to results hardly different from that.

What, exactly, is the problem the university sees in grade gaps? UW asserts that they “suppress the horizons of students” and diminish the school’s reputation. No evidence is advanced in support of those claims, however.

I would argue to the contrary that many students will suffer academically if they receive the artificial boost of higher grades than they actually earned just because they happen to be in a “targeted group.” Students need accurate feedback on how they’re doing, not inflated grades that boost their egos.

I would also argue that the university’s reputation will be diminished by these efforts at equalizing grades between groups. Pressures to eliminate grading gaps will lead to the “dumbing down” of courses and, even more likely, grade inflation for targeted minority students. This pretend solution won’t make the university better for anyone.

UW-Madison is going through all these contortions because the administration can’t or won’t acknowledge a simple fact: some groups of admitted students are significantly less well prepared for college work.

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Creating a “Teaching/Learning” Evaluation Instrument For Proficiencies-Based Economics Courses

Creating a Teaching-Learning Evaluation Instrument For Proficiencies-Based Economics Courses

A slightly abbreviated version of this essay will appear in the Summer 2014 issue of Liberal Education.

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