Scott Walker tries to wreck the University of Wisconsin

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker submitted a budget proposal that included language that would have changed the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code — by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

Walker, in a budget speech given earlier this week, didn’t bother to mention the change, which is more than a simple issue of semantics. There is a national debate about what the role of colleges and universities should be. One group, including Walker, see higher education in big part as a training ground for workers in the American workplace; another sees college education as a way to broaden the minds of young people and teach them how to be active, productive citizens of the country.

After fierce public criticism, Walker, who recently said that faculty and staff throughout the university system needed to work harder and who is seeking to cut funding for the university system by $300 million over the next two years, said the change in language was a mistake. A Walker aide called it “drafting error,” according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The Journal-Sentinel, however, reported that Walker’s office had “requested in painstaking detail the removal of phrases central to the Wisconsin Idea — the guiding principle of the state’s public university system for more than a century.” And it said it found references in the budget proposal in which the administration requested that the changes be made.

The paper said it discovered a Dec. 30 e-mail from state Department of Administration budget analyst Nathan Schwanz that was sent to nonpartisan attorneys at the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau who were drafting the bill “to make a number of changes to the mission statement of the UW-System as it is enshrined in state statutes.” Then, on Jan. 12, the newspaper reported, he sent another e-mail explicitly saying that the Walker administration wanted changes made; it said: “To extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses should be removed.”