For a leader who came up short on keeping a University of Wisconsin presence in Washington County, despite the use of two task forces, Republican governor candidate Josh Schoemann has some big ideas about reforms for the Universities of Wisconsin, also involving similar commissions.
Josh Schoemann
Schoemann, Washington County executive, is one of eight candidates running for governor of Wisconsin in 2026, and one of two Republicans. Give him credit for surfacing big ideas for the UW System while the other candidates, six of them Democrats, have been relatively silent on some of the more pressing issues facing the state.
For example, they have all been relatively silent on soaring health costs and the impact of President Trump’s damaging executive actions on broad tariffs and over-the-top immigration policies.
The UW Board of Regents and UW President Jay Rothman have put forward some low level policy changes, like certifying general education credits for acceptance across all UW campuses and guaranteeing acceptance at UW-Madison for the top 5% of high school graduating classes.
But some of the biggest issues concerning UW have gone untouched.
Schoemann recently touched on a couple of them, but called for commissions to do the heavy lifting on professor tenure, possibly closing one of the 11 four-year universities and spinning off UW-Madison from the rest of the system.
It’s ironic that Schoemann expressed confidence in using commissions for solutions. He created two task forces: first to keep the two-year UW campus operating in some manner in his county and later to find new uses for the campus after Rothman closed it down in 2024.
He took the proposal of the first task force, of which I was co-chair, to consolidate the two-year UW-Washington County with the two-year Moraine Park Technical College campus four miles away. That concept got near unanimous support in the community and in the legislature, but when Schoemann took it to Madison for final approval, it became a partisan issue and the pilot for Washington County drew a veto from Democrat Gov. Tony Evers.
It was a double whammy: a gubernatorial veto and later a complete shutdown by Rothman.
Schoemann created a second task force on what to do with the vacant campus owned by the county and the city. He had advocated a “social capital,” and his task force, of which I was also a member, came up with just such a multi-use concept.
Schoemann paid no attention to the work of his own task force. He went around it and negotiated a $3 million sale to a tiny evangelical Christian school with fewer than 150 students.
The county and city are also eligible for $2 million in transition money from the state to ease the pain of the UW closure. How that money will be used remains unclear.
The county is also apparently ignoring a potential lawsuit from the Washington County Community Foundation for violating of donor intent. The Foundation was the conduit for a $1.2 million gift from the Collins family in the late 1960s to build the science wing on the UWWC building. The Foundation wants that money back from the sale, presumably for scholarships for county high school graduates. The resolution of that legal disagreement remains unclear.
Back to broader UW issues: Schoemann has proposed a package that includes the elimination of professor tenure and the spinoff UW-Madison as a separate entity.
Tom Tiffany
He and Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, the other candidate for the GOP nomination, have called for a renewed freeze on UW tuition, but both waffled on added state funding to make up for the loss of tuition revenue. Schoemann said in an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would use a commission on that subject and on the future UW strategy.
Both were indefinite on whether to expand the “Wisconsin Promise” program that makes UW tuition affordable to lower income people. Schoemann suggested the idea that such subsidies could be paid back by students working in community service. He has championed a similar idea for paying off affordable housing down payments.
With more than nine months to go before the 2026 gubernatorial election, there is still plenty of time and opportunity for the eight announced candidates to address other major issues surrounding one of the state’s greatest assets, the UW system of higher education, such as:
- Regional Reorganization — If UW-Madison were spun out, what would happen to the other 12 campuses? A previous Republican proposal would divide the system into four regions to align more closely with how the state’s economy operates, each with its own board of regents.
- UW Flagship — Would UW-Milwaukee, the other doctoral university in the system, become the flagship for the remaining system?
- Spinoff UW Health — The most obvious potential spinoff for billions of dollars would be to sell UW Health, the giant health system based in Madison that is now bigger than our flagship campus itself. The spinoff would include Quartz, a health insurer owned in part by UW Health. What is the UW, a higher educational enterprise, doing in the health care and health insurance businesses?
- Priorities on Spending? — Why are we closing two-year campuses to save a few million dollars, possibly a four-year campus and sharply cutting majors at some four-year campuses, at the same time UW-Madison is spending $285 million on a new football practice field?
- Credentials vs. Degrees — What about a broader use of credentials for completion of courses aimed at workplace needs as proposed by Michael Alexander, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Students could beef up their resumes short of a baccalaureate degree.
The Schoemann refrain of deferring to potential commissions on various UW subjects raises an obvious larger concept. Over the last decade or so, in the face of declining enrollment, influential people in the state have called for a high-level Blue Ribbon commission on the future of the UW system. Its charge by the governor or the regents or both could obviously include the issues raised by Schoemann and Tiffany in what looks to be a lively governor campaign.
With no incumbent, as Evers is stepping aside, the white board is wide open for fresh thinking and reinventing how the state meets the needs of our modern students, many of whom start their college careers while still in high school.
