Blank’s Slate

Among the many unpleasant surprises in the recently proposed federal budget framework is a cap of 10 percent on facilities and administrative costs for awards from the National Institutes of Health. The cap represents a dramatic reduction in the recovery of “indirect costs” universities incur to support research and to maintain safe and productive research environments for their faculty, staff and student investigators. “Indirect costs” are perhaps an inappropriate name, as it implies to some people that these are not “real” costs. So-called “direct costs” pay for things like lab supplies and equipment, salaries and stipends for researchers and graduate students, … Read more of The cost of keeping the research engine humming

President Donald Trump’s first budget request to Congress has understandably caused some concern on our campus and across the higher education landscape. The $4.1 trillion proposal lays out an aggressive plan to reduce discretionary non-defense spending as a way to offset large proposed defense spending increases. The cuts are broad and deep, but a significant chunk of the savings proposed would come out of student aid and research spending. The budget proposal funds the Department of Education at $59 billion, which is $9 billion less than FY 2017 levels, or a 13 percent cut in funding. While investment in Pell … Read more of The federal budget proposal and its potential impact on UW-Madison

Committed readers of this blog will recall that last Memorial Day weekend my husband and I spent a day driving from La Crosse to Prairie du Chien along the Mississippi River. That was such a fun drive, we decided to do the rest of the Great River Road in Wisconsin this Memorial Day. We set off on Friday afternoon in an amazing amount of traffic on I-90/I-94 and drove to River Falls for the evening, a small city home to UW-River Falls. A good pizza parlor and a nearby Dairy Queen provided dinner. The next morning we drove to Prescott, … Read more of Down the Great River Road of the Mississippi

As we reach the end of another semester, I want to look back for a moment and acknowledge a few of the many great individual and collective student achievements over the past academic year. At UW-Madison, we have 43,000 students from across Wisconsin and around the world, pursuing degrees in more than 200 fields. In this academic year, we have conferred more than 10,500 degrees, both undergraduate and graduate. (By the way, we are among the top five schools in the nation for the number of Ph.D.s we graduate — among the most sought-after workers in our economy.) And we’ve … Read more of End of Semester Notes