Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin cemented his reputation this year as just about the worst enemy the state’s public-college professors have ever had.
He repealed state laws that protected tenure and shared governance.
With one eye on the White House, he burnished his conservative Republican image by challenging the secure employment of professors in the University of Wisconsin system and pushing his brand of business efficiency there. “Maybe it’s time for faculty and staff to start thinking about teaching more classes and doing more work,” he said on a local radio station.
Four years after pushing through legislation that crippled faculty labor unions at public colleges, Mr. Walker got rid of state laws that had long guaranteed tenure protections and a powerful voice in institutional governance to the system’s professors.
Under a sweeping budget bill he signed in July, the university’s faculty members were left with fewer job protections. No longer did the law say they could be fired only for just cause. Those who had tenure could be laid off for budgetary or programmatic reasons, a threshold for dismissal much lower than the old one requiring a financial emergency.
Although professors in the public-university system can still appeal dismissals for speech or conduct protected by academic freedom, that’s about all that sets them apart in terms of job security from any other state employee.
And faculty members now have much less of a say in how their institutions are run. Under the new law, the faculty is in a purely advisory role, subordinate to the system’s board, president, and campus chancellors. And discussions can’t be dominated by certain disciplines: On each campus, bodies like faculty senates must have adequate representation from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics departments.
Mr. Walker, 48, didn’t win every battle this year — for example, autonomy for the university system, which may have meant tighter control by a politically appointed Board of Regents — but the reforms he did shepherd through the Republican-dominated Legislature left faculty members reeling and, in many cases, looking for work elsewhere.
“It is difficult to envision a future in this new environment,” David J. Vanness, an associate professor of population health sciences on the flagship campus, at Madison, wrote for The Chronicle, bemoaning “a political culture that vilifies professors as elitist, entitled, and lazy.”
Wisconsin was hardly the only state where faculty members felt besieged by lawmakers. Governors across the political spectrum have put pressure on public colleges to be more accountable and to quit offering degree programs that don’t clearly prepare students for jobs. But Mr. Walker stood out for his willingness to go to war with faculty members to shake up higher education’s status quo.
His staff even toyed with altering the university system’s long-revered mission statement by replacing its commitment to public service and “the search for truth” with a focus on meeting work-force needs.
That aborted attempt and the governor’s attack on tenure may have captured the most attention, but there was more bad news for public colleges: $250 million in budget cuts. The system’s regents responded by tapping into surplus funds and calling for the elimination of 400 positions at Madison.
Although the regents also adopted new tenure protections to replace those stripped from state law, many faculty members still feel vulnerable. Such policies can be changed easily by a board consisting primarily of gubernatorial appointees.
Faculty members elsewhere could at least take solace in Mr. Walker’s decision, in September, to scuttle his presidential campaign. His ideas may continue to resonate beyond Wisconsin, but, at least for now, his reach as a lawmaker ends at that state’s borders.
Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.
Correction (12/14/2015, 3:45 p.m.): A previous verson of this article said that a provision of state law deleted under Governor Walker had allowed faculty members to automatically qualify for tenure after seven years. What the provision had actually done was limit probationary appointments of tenure-track faculty members to seven years, in essence forcing campuses to either award them tenure status or dismiss them by the seven-year mark. That statement has been removed.
