Enrollment is dropping at five of the Universities of Wisconsin’s nine remaining branch campuses this fall and rising at four, according to projections released Friday by UW system leadership.
Five UW system branches expected to see enrollment drops | Wisconsin State Journal
Fall enrollment at UW-Stevens Point’s campuses in Marshfield and Wausau is expected to be down by 44.2% and 21.4%, respectively, with Marshfield enrollment standing at 158 students, versus 283 last year, and Wausau enrolling 286 students, down from 364 last year.
The campuses with the next largest decreases, by percentage, are UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha and UW-Oshkosh at Fox Cities, both of which are slated for closure at the end of the year. UW-Platteville at Baraboo expects to see 25 fewer students, an 11.9% decrease.
Elsewhere, enrollment is on the upswing: Two branch campuses, UW-Green Bay at Sheboygan and UW-Whitewater at Rock County, will see modest enrollment growth of 1.1% and 2.7%, respectively. At two others, UW-Eau Claire at Barron County and UW-Green Bay at Manitowoc, enrollment is expected to be up by 12.7% and 22.3%, respectively.
The UW system repeatedly has cited downward enrollment trends in shuttering six campuses over the past few years, but falling enrollment does not necessarily mean the system will be closing additional campuses.
The declines may be a particularly worrying sign for UW-Stevens Point’s branch campuses in Marshfield and Wausau, however.
For one thing, the two campuses have the steepest enrollment declines, by percentage, based on the system’s projections.
And in a memo to UW system President Jay Rothman last spring, Stevens Point Chancellor Thomas Gibson indicated that increasing enrollment was the only viable option for the campuses’ future, “The modest amount of space needed to offer academic and sustainable community programming does not warrant having full campuses, or perhaps even parts of the current campuses.”
UW-Stevens Point spokesperson Carrie Heibler told the Wisconsin State Journal the decreases on the Marshfield and Wausau campuses are the result of fewer high school dual-enrollment students at the Marshfield and Wausau branch campuses.
“On the positive side, we have seen gains in both first-year and transfer numbers on both campuses,” Heibler said.
System reversal on enrollment data
Initially, the UW system did not plan to release enrollment projections for the branch campuses. On Monday, system leadership said it would just report the enrollment data at the parent campus level.
“Those are now access points for the universities with which they’re affiliated, so they are baked into each of the universities’ (enrollments),” Rothman said Monday. “I asked the chancellors to put together plans for the future to ensure that the branch campuses that remained open were financially viable, and the chancellors are executing those plans.”
Media organizations, however, pushed for the release of the branch campus data, and the system provided it Friday, after transparency concerns were expressed and the ability of prospective students to make educational decisions was called into question.
Earlier this week, Gov. Tony Evers said the data would be available, when asked by reporters.
Half of the 2-year campuses will remain
In the past two years since Rothman and UW system leaders have announced branch campus closures, they have said the decisions have been based on enrollment, not finances, although student enrollment is closely tied to campus finances. Tuition now makes up 23.4% of the UW system’s budget, compared with 14.4% three decades ago; state support for the UW system has dropped from 32% to 17.5% in that same time, putting Wisconsin in the bottom fifth for public higher education funding in the nation.
After the first branch campus closure, that of UW-Platteville at Richland, was announced in November 2022, Rothman directed all chancellors with branch campuses to evaluate their financial viability. Six branch campuses — in Richland Center, Fond du Lac, Washington County, Marinette, Waukesha County and Menasha for the Fox Cities — have since either closed or will end classes at the end of this school year; seven of the 14 original two-year branch campuses will remain after this academic year.
Of the memos, obtained by the State Journal through a records request, one from UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Andrew Leavitt recommended closing the Fox Cities campus, citing its proximity to the UW-Oshkosh main campus, and UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone already had announced the closure of both the Washington and Waukesha County branches by the time his viability plan was due.
The other memos, from UW-Eau Claire, UW-Green Bay, UW-Platteville and UW-Whitewater, indicated they were interested in keeping their branch campuses in some form, but changes would be needed to the campuses’ footprints.
Source: Five UW system branches expected to see enrollment drops
