Author: Joe Salmons

Classes on Thursday

Dear Colleagues, We are deeply concerned about the future of our university and the welfare of our students. The governor’s budget repair bill threatens both. As you know, it is likely that classes will be disrupted on Thursday. We recognize…

And what about those furloughs?

Among the many questions we’ve been getting about last week’s budget announcements were several about furloughs. The language used was ambiguous, as a number of people pointed out — it was unclear whether current levels of furloughs would continue. Here’s…

Public Employee Pay

One of the political memes of the day is that public employees are better far paid than those working in the private sector. Like most memes, it’s worth looking at the underlying facts. An article in today’s New York Times…

PROFS report to the Faculty Senate, December 6, 2010

Yesterday’s Faculty Senate meeting was the chance for the annual PROFS report to the Senate. Senators and visitors received the printed PROFS report (here) and a handout distributed at the meeting (here). And we continued the PROFS tradition of cookies…

A move to end furloughs and restore raises

This piece by AP reporter Ryan Foley details efforts by the University of Wisconsin System to end state-mandated furloughs for non-represented University of Wisconsin employees and to restore the 2% pay raises for faculty and academic staff eliminated from the…

Cieslewicz: Stop Attacking UW

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz recently blogged about the importance of UW-Madison to the entire state. Prompted by the attacks on the city by State Representative Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), the mayor questioned why it seems to be good politics for some…

Announcing: WISCAPE director’s blog

Shortly after our new web page was launched, we called attention to some sources of news on faculty issues at UW and for higher education generally. At that point, we noted that the  Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary…

Daily Cardinal on faculty pay

If you haven’t seen today’s Daily Cardinal, you should look at it — this article, “Power up professors’ paltry paychecks: UW should more actively solicit donations for professor salaries”, suggests refocusing spending from buildings to faculty salaries. PROFS and other…