Linda Gentes ordered "Save our campus" buttons this fall to hand out around the University of Wisconsin campus in Richland Center. She was worried about her former employer and its future. With just 60 degree-seeking students enrolled this semester, she and others felt the need for a public awareness campaign to do something, anything, to turn the tide.
The buttons came too late. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, UW System President Jay Rothman announced that in-person degree programs at the Richland campus will cease at the end of the spring 2023 semester. His reasons were straightforward: Low enrollment and financial pressures made the cost of operating a traditional campus in Richland "untenable."
But Gentes and others in the Richland community say that's far too simplistic of a narrative. They don't dispute that demographics played a role in the demise of their campus, but they also believe UW-Platteville, which absorbed oversight of UW-Richland in 2018, mismanaged the campus into oblivion.
"They eliminated nearly everything that made up our campus," Gentes said. "They eliminated the dean, our dedicated recruiter, our international coordinator. This was not an honest effort by Platteville to understand our campus."
UW-Platteville charges the Richland campus and its other branch campus in Baraboo a fee to cover the cost of centralized administrative services, which further strained UW-Richland's budget and stands out because most other UW campuses do not use this model. Former high school students and current K-12 administrators describe little to no recruitment at area high schools. And UW-Platteville repeatedly rejected money from UW-Richland's private foundation to pay for a dedicated campus recruiter.
These decisions and others, critics say, illustrate how UW-Platteville prioritized its four-year campus at the expense of its two-years.
"This is a tragedy that didn’t have to happen," said Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator who lives in Richland Center. "It’s just devastating for this community. The campus had about 30 to 35 good-paying jobs. That'd be like losing 3,000 jobs in Milwaukee."
Rothman rejected accusations that UW-Platteville dropped the ball.
"I certainly do not view it by any stretch of the imagination as mismanagement by UW-Platteville," he said in an interview. "Not even close in my mind. But if you look at what's happening generally across the country, enrollments in junior colleges have dropped precipitously."
More:With their campus facing extinction, UW-Richland students confront UW president
That's true. Enrollment at regional public institutions nationwide have been plummeting since before the pandemic. The UW System's two-year campuses had problems even before the 2018 restructuring put branch campus oversight under a four-year campus. They've been squeezed by stagnant state funding and a tuition freeze that's lasted four years longer than what the four-years have endured. Many, including UW-Richland, are in rural areas that are quickly losing population and where high school graduates are less inclined to pursue higher education.
Since 2018, UW-Richland's enrollment plunged by nearly 84%, from 366 students to 60. While other branch campuses have seen enrollment continue to decline, no branch campus has shed students at a faster rate, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis.
While Rothman said what happened to UW-Richland shouldn't be viewed as a sign of what may happen to other branch campuses, many in the Richland Center community believe their situation is a harbinger of what's to come. Among the latter is Sen. Howard Marklein, a Spring Green Republican whose district includes UW-Richland.
"I'd certainly be concerned if I’m another two-year campus in the state," he recently told a Richland Center radio station.
Recruiters promoted UW-Platteville, students and high schools say
Scan the meeting minutes of the Richland County Board's education committee over the past few years and it's easy to see locals' hope sprinkled throughout the pages.
In spring 2021, new billboards promoting the campus went up. That summer, a proposal to sell some of the campus's land for a housing development was rejected, with many worried it would send the wrong message about the county's commitment to the campus.
In February of this year, UW-Platteville set a goal for the campus to reach 325 full-time students by 2026. In July, the committee approved a five-year plan for capital improvements to the campus.
Still, the drain-circling situation was undeniable. The campus marketing director said he was struggling with how to handle repeated comments like "get a job in the trade(s)" on the school's Facebook page. County supervisors were introduced one month to a branch campus community director only to have her leave about a year later. The branch campus recruiter barely lasted the full 2020-21 school year.
John Poole spent his 42-year career working for UW-Richland before retiring in 2013 and formed a "Friends of the Richland Campus" group last year. He said there has been a "revolving door" of recruiters, none of whom were solely dedicated to UW-Richland.
UW-Platteville declined to say how many recruiters have cycled through the position since the merger and said the university has always had a dedicated recruiter for the Richland Center and Baraboo region.
Even with a recruiter working in the region, their visits to high schools focused on promoting UW-Platteville, not the branch campuses, according to UW-Richland students Brody Smith, Jackson Kinney and Emily Lund. When Lund went out of her way to ask about UW-Richland, the recruiter said she'd have to email someone else for information about the campus.
Frustrated with how little attention UW-Richland received when he attended a Richland Center high school, UW-Richland sophom*ore Jake Steele volunteered to do his own recruiting at local schools because he believes the campus is "a great stepping stone" where professors "are very personally invested in you."
In a high-poverty, hard-working farming community, having a local campus can save students thousands of dollars by living at home and paying a tuition rate $2,200 cheaper.
"Some of these kids would not have gotten their four-year degree if the Richland campus hadn’t been here," said Gretchen Kanable, who works as high school counselor for the Richland Center school district. "And that includes me."
At a college fair for Kanable's students, she said, UW-Platteville's presentation "stuck out like a sore thumb" because the Richland and Baraboo campuses were mentioned just twice.
"To have the campus in our backyard and for it to barely be promoted was kind of disappointing," she said.
As UW-Richland struggled to fill seats year after year, the campus's private fundraising foundation offered at least half a dozen times since 2018 to pay for their own recruiter, said Darlo Wentz, who was the foundation's director until retiring earlier this year. UW-Platteville repeatedly declined, he said, saying only that it didn't fit its recruiting "model."
"I was shocked," Wentz said. "Normally when someone offers to pay for an employee, you don’t turn it down."
International student recruitment critical to UW-Richland enrollment
Mike Breininger is blunt in describing UW-Platteville's takeover of UW-Richland: "Disastrous."
Breininger is the administrator for Eagle School, a private K-12 school in Richland Center that had a robust international student program. That made the school a natural feeder to the campus, which had its own vibrant international program. Many of Eagle's international students went on to UW-Richland after graduation through an agreement with the campus that didn't require them to take an English proficiency or ACT test to gain admittance.
When UW-Platteville assumed oversight of UW-Richland, the four-year campus ended Eagle's agreement with UW-Richland, Breininger said. So he called UW-Platteville's admissions office to nail down a new arrangement. A UW-Platteville employee, according to his account, suggested Breininger send the students to Platteville instead of Richland.
While Breininger acknowledges the pandemic played a role in the international student program, he said UW-Platteville failed to revive programs that would have helped UW-Richland's enrollment numbers. Nine Brazilian soccer players who graduated from Eagle School last spring likely would have attended UW-Richland, he said. But all of them enrolled elsewhere because UW-Richland's soccer program stopped during the pandemic and wasn't restarted.
"Unless there is dramatic change, UW-P will sink UW-R," he wrote in in a letter to local leaders earlier this year.
DeAnna Jelinek also felt like UW-Platteville intended to dismantle UW-Richland's international student pipeline. She served as interim international student coordinator for UW-Richland from fall 2019 to fall 2020, a job that she expected to involve extensive interaction with international recruiters. These individuals serve as the bridge between U.S. universities and agencies in other countries where international students often start their college searches.
Jelinek said UW-Platteville instructed her not to talk with recruiters and to forward emails from them to UW-Platteville.
"I believe I was hired to simply shut it down," she said.
UW-Platteville declined to make interim Chancellor Tammy Evetovich available for an interview. She took the top job in June after serving two years as the school's provost. The university also declined to respond to several questions about specific criticisms lodged by the Richland community, including its handling of the international program and its rejection of the foundation's offer.
UW-Platteville spokesperson Paul Erickson said in an email that "(T)here is a lot more context to some of the questions...however, UW-Platteville is acting on President Rothman’s directive, with our primary concern the transitioning of our students, faculty and staff."
UW-Platteville will absorb UW-Richland's budget, UW System spokesperson Ethan Schuh said.
Few branch campuses pay tax
As enrollments shrink, campus budgets must do the same. But with many of the same fixed costs, delivering education becomes more expensive.
In UW-Platteville's first year in charge of UW-Richland, it allocated $2 million for 275 students, or about $7,300 per student. As enrollment fell, the per-student educational cost skyrocketed. Consider the $1.4 million budget for 75 students in 2022, or about $18,700 per student.
Then factor in the "main campus chargeback." UW-Platteville took 10% of UW-Richland and UW-Baraboo's budgets for administrative operations and support services. In 2021-22, that equated to $262,000 of UW-Richland's budget being diverted to UW-Platteville, according to Richland County board meeting minutes.
A campus budget document obtained by the Journal Sentinel shows that in addition to charging the branch campuses 10% in 2019-20, UW-Platteville also moved $75,000 in UW-Richland's enrollment reserves to balance the main campus' budget shortfall.
UW-Richland faculty dubbed it the "branch campus tax" — a tax that few others have had.
Of the six other universities that manage a branch campus, UWM was the only one to say that it uses an administrative fee model. UWM officials said all colleges and schools, not just the branch campuses, are "taxed" to support central services, such as human resources and payroll. The tax is reviewed annually. Currently, UWM branch campuses pay back 20% of its revenue.
UW-Green Bay said a tax approach wouldn't work for its campuses in Manitowoc, Marinette and Sheboygan. The university is arguably doing the best at stemming enrollment decline on its branch campuses. All three have reported a slight uptick in students at various points throughout the merger.
"We staff holistically as one university with four locations, so what was happening at Richland Center would not be consistent with our philosophy of how we are operating a university with multiple access points," said UW-Green Bay spokesperson Kristin Bouchard. "We use our budgets to support this model and increase connections between all of our locations."
Former UW-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields, who was in charge of the Richland campus from 2018 until last spring when he left for a job in Louisiana, declined an interview request. Presented with the critiques, he wrote in an email: "I think it best that I leave this alone currently. Any comments I might make are not going to change the outcome."
Does Wisconsin have too many college campuses?
Even though in-person degree programs are ending at UW-Richland, Rothman wants UW to maintain some sort of presence there, such as through adult learning or online classes. He asked Evetovich to come up with the details by Jan. 15.
It's a move former UW System President Cross supports. He said Richland's case clearly shows that communities want a UW presence. That's why Cross pushed through the 2018 restructuring as a way to keep the branch campuses open and preserve rural communities' access to higher education.
"But the economics of what they’re asking us to do is overwhelming," he said.
One of the lawmakers with the most purse string power is Marklein, who co-chairs the Legislature's budget-writing committee. The state senator declined a Journal Sentinel interview request but recently told a Richland Center radio station that some of the blame belongs with UW-Platteville. For example, he said rejecting the foundation's offer to pay for a recruiter "certainly supports the theory that this was sabotage."
"To get cut off at the knees and starve you from the resources you need ... is pretty tough," he said.
But Marklein rejected the notion that Republicans may have also played a role in UW-Richland's demise, as some locals have charged. He said the longstanding tuition freeze Republicans imposed a decade ago had "no impact whatsoever on campuses," an assertion UW officials strongly dispute.
Rep. Travis Tranel, R-Cuba City, and Rep. Todd Novak, R-Dodgeville, both of whom represent districts that include portions of Richland County, did not respond to requests for comment.
Rep. Tony Kurtz, R-Wonewoc, whose district includes the campus and whose daughter recently earned her associate degree there, said Richland County needed a decision. He had worried UW would take even longer than it did to pull the plug, which wouldn't have helped the county's finances. The county owns and maintains the campus buildings.
UW-Platteville made several decisions that Kurtz disagreed with, such as eliminating a dedicated recruiter. He believes UW-Platteville was siphoning students from its branch campuses but he also said demographics were an insurmountable challenge. He said he needs to help his fellow legislators understand that their two-year or four-year institution may be next.
"I have a feeling it will get worse before it gets better," he told the Journal Sentinel. "It’s something nobody wants to talk about. It’s an uncomfortable subject. But we do need to look at the footprint of the (UW) System moving forward."
The next smallest campus is in Baraboo. It has fewer than 200 students and it, too, is managed by UW-Platteville.
Gentes, Poole and others with longtime ties to UW-Richland haven't given up hope on preserving their campus. But they have also half-jokingly and half-seriously suggested an additional course of action. Perhaps some of their "Save the campus" buttons should go the Baraboo community, too.
More:Wisconsin's pandemic-era high school students are now in college. Some need more help
Contact Kelly Meyerhofer at kmeyerhofer@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KellyMeyerhofer.
