6 Merger Within Merger: 1970-1974

President Richard Nixon, in his 1970 State of the Union Address, placed special emphasis upon two major issues—the continuing conflict in Vietnam and the increasingly alarming economic news. Shortly after he had taken office, Nixon had announced that United States combat troops would gradually be withdrawn from South Vietnam. For a few months this hopeful new policy defused antiwar protests on the nation’s college campuses. But as time passed and the war continued, the protests flared anew. In January 1970, after the old Red Gym on the Madison campus was firebombed, the Daily Cardinal ran an editorial which approved of the use of firebombs “to rid this campus once and for all of repressive ideas and institutions.” Then, in August of the same year, in the early morning, a tremendous blast heavily damaged Sterling Hall, which housed the Army Mathematics Research Center; it killed a young physics’ researcher who happened to be in the building. These incidents elicited calls from state legislators for UW President Harrington to resign, while anxious parents sought assurances that their sons and daughters could safely attend the Madison campus.^[1]

The economic news was puzzling, even to the experts. The United States was experiencing “stagflation,” a word coined to describe an economy that had stalled while at the same time the inflation rate continued to rise. Stagflation meant that all government budgets—local, state, and federal—were being squeezed hard. This budget pressure had convinced Wisconsin Governor Warren Knowles to create the Kellett Commission in 1969 to study the state’s entire public education establishment and to recommend how it could be streamlined to achieve greater efficiencies.

Both of these issues played a prominent role in Wisconsin’s 1970 elections. As usual, most of the attention focused upon the governor’s race, which had been thrown wide open by three-term Republican Governor Knowles’ unexpected announcement that he would not seek another term. In addition, the 1970 gubernatorial election would for the first time choose someone for a four-year, rather than two-year, term of office. Both parties’ candidates were selected in primaries: Republican Lieutenant Governor Jack Olson handily won his party’s contest, while Madison real estate magnate Patrick J. Lucey rather easily became the Democrat nominee.^[2]

During the campaign neither Olson nor Lucey devoted much attention to higher education issues. Both said they would assist UW officials to get tough with the small number of students who were continually disrupting the Madison campus.^[3]

In the sole speech that he devoted to higher education, the Democrat nominee focused almost exclusively upon economic issues. Lucey pledged to keep tuition low and affordable and promised to support salary increases, at least equal to the rate of inflation for the faculties of both the Wisconsin State Universities and the University of Wisconsin. Lucey, however, made no comment on the Kellett Commission’s highly publicized suggestion that the two university systems should be consolidated under a “super board of education,” which would operate all public education in Wisconsin, preschool through graduate school.^[4]

When the ballots were counted, the Democrats were elated. Pat Lucey had bested Jack Olson by a 135,000 vote margin out of over 1.35 million votes (55% to 45%). In addition Lucey’s broad coattails had carried many Democrats to victory in Assembly races, where they would enjoy a 67 to 33 margin. The Republicans, however, had retained a strong seven vote majority in the 33 member Senate.^[5]

Since the Kellett Commission report on public education in Wisconsin was scheduled for completion by the end of November 1970, speculation immediately began about how Lucey would react to recommendations made by a task force appointed by his Republican predecessor.^[6] Governor Knowles had appointed the Commission in February 1969 and had requested that it complete its work by the following January. However, the commissioners quickly discovered that the issues they needed to examine were too complex to meet that deadline. Instead, they issued a preliminary report in February 1970 and promised to complete their task shortly after the fall election.^[7] After the preliminary recommendations were made public, the commission’s various committees held public hearings to gauge reactions to their proposals. Commission Chairman William Kellett often chaired these hearings, especially when a controversial issue was examined.^[8]

The Commission’s Study Committee on Education for Employment had unveiled in December 1969 a proposal which directly involved the state’s two-year campuses. It recommended creation of “a state-wide system of comprehensive area colleges” which would be empowered to offer programs in four areas: adult education, vocational education, technical education, and the liberal arts. The plan suggested forming as many as ten of these comprehensive colleges outside of Madison and Milwaukee, via a merger of existing and projected vocational and technical schools with either a nearby UW Center or a WSU branch campus. Because fears had surfaced that the liberal arts college credit component could overshadow the other programs, the Study Committee recommended that the liberal arts enrollment be limited to twenty-five percent of each institution’s total enrollment. The proposal cited the significant savings that could be achieved by this merger—a reduction by at least half of the administrative staffs, less duplication in the physical plant, and much better utilization of the faculty. It also asserted that students would be better served by being able to transfer easily from a liberal arts curriculum to a vocational-technical program without the stigma that was often attached to such a move.^[9]

Strong opposition to this scheme was quickly voiced by the Center System, the University of Wisconsin, the State Board of Vocational, Technical and Adult Education (SBVTAE), and labor representatives. The Wisconsin State University Board of Regents did not comment on the comprehensive area college proposal, perhaps because the WSU had just four branch campuses at risk, while the UW could potentially lose all ten of its two-year campuses. The State Universities also supported the Kellett Commission suggestion which recommended that the relatively new UW four-year campuses at Green Bay and Parkside (Racine) be transferred to the WSU System, thus leaving UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee to concentrate primarily upon graduate education.^[10]

In early February 1970 Chancellor Adolfson sent to President Harrington two position papers which detailed the Center System’s opposition to the proposed merger. President Harrington and other UW officials often used Adolfson’s arguments in the campaign against the merger.^[11] Adolfson noted that the missions of the Centers and the Vocational-Technical institutions were significantly and deliberately different and that serious damage would occur to both if they were compelled to merge programs. He pointed out that the Centers were unlike either junior colleges or community colleges because of the intimate connection to UW-Madison. Any attempt to turn them into community colleges via a forced merger would “abolish their present function,” Adolfson believed, and would fail to create viable new institutions. Contrary to the expectations of the Study Committee on Education for Employment, the Chancellor offered his opinion that most of the Centers’ administrators and faculty members would seek new employment rather than continue to serve in a radically different institution. Hiring a substantially new group of teachers would raise anew issues of the quality and transferability of the liberal arts credits, which so far had been ensured by the Centers’ long association with the University of Wisconsin. Adolfson agreed that Vocational-Technical education deserved to receive more emphasis but he argued that the proposed merger would not achieve that goal; indeed, the merger would no doubt result in the liberal arts program, even with limits on enrollment, overshadowing technical education. Adolfson also faulted the Study Committee’s data, which included national, not state, figures; outdated and too high cost calculations for the Centers and too low enrollment projections for the Centers. Finally, he observed that the Kellett Commission had not calculated how much money its plan would save. Actually, Adolfson believed that a merger would cost the state more money.^[12]

Officials of the SBVTAE and the state AFL-CIO Apprenticeship Conference also attacked the comprehensive area college plan. For example Joseph Noll, chairman of the SBVTAE, spoke out against the idea at a public hearing in November 1969. Noll feared that a merger would mean the eventual dominance of the liberal arts program, because that had been the experience in every state where community colleges had been created^[13] Clarence Greiber, the long-time director of the SBVTAE, supported Noll’s remarks and added the observation that both California and Florida, which had comprehensive community colleges, had found it necessary to construct separate technical schools in order to assure an adequate supply of well-trained employees for technical occupations.^[14] The delegates to the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Apprenticeship Congress, who met in February 1970, added their voices to the chorus of protest. They, too, agreed that all the evidence indicated that when both liberal arts and technical programs were offered in a single institution, the former by far overshadowed the latter. The delegates also expressed fears that organized labor would lose its direct input into the vocational training programs if the state implemented the Kellett Commission recommendation.^[15]

The Kellett Commission submitted its formal recommendations to Governor Knowles in late November 1970. Evidently the combined opposition of the UW, the SBVTAE, and the state AFL-CIO to the creation of community colleges had been effective. The Commission’s final report, entitled “A Forward Look,” did not propose a merger but left the door ajar by urging that the SBVTAE “be authorized to phase into the Technical College System two-year university branch campuses and two-year centers where appropriate.” ^[16] Also of keen interest to both the UW and the WSU was the final word on a much larger merger—one which would combine these two systems under a single board of regents. On this issue, also, the commissioners had bowed to criticism and recommended retaining the status quo. However, the report discussed at length the rationale for an eventual union and the Commission urged that further study of this issue be undertaken immediately by the state government.^[17]

Governor Knowles received the long-awaited report amid much fanfare, thanked the commissioners for their hard work, and bestowed his approval upon their recommendations. But, of course, the lame duck Republican Governor’s reactions to “A Forward Look” were relatively unimportant. Consequently, attention quickly shifted to Governor-elect Lucey’s reaction.

As noted previously, during the campaign Lucey had not devoted much attention to higher education issues. And even now, with all of the work that had to be accomplished prior to assuming office, he had little to say about the Kellett Commission’s recommendations. So, until Lucey revealed his views, the press had to make do with speculations and with trying to ferret out hints about how the Lucey administration might handle the state’s higher education systems. For example, the Milwaukee Sentinel, shortly after the election, conjectured that Lucey would try to merge the two boards of regents in an attempt to reduce administrative expenses and, more importantly, to end the costly duplication of academic programs. The same article noted that the Coordinating Committee for Higher Education (CCHE) was in a very precarious position due to its failures to halt this duplication. In fact, the Sentinel suggested that even Republican senators probably would not complain if Lucey found a way to eliminate the CCHE.^[18]

In December 1970, during the governor-elect’s preliminary budget hearings, speculation about a merger of the two state financed university systems received new fuel from the testimony of Lee S. Dreyfus, the President of the WSU-Stevens Point. Dreyfus, a close personal friend of Lucey, made a lengthy, careful comparison between the mission, enrollment, and budget of his institution and that of UW-Green Bay. Although the first two, he stressed, were nearly identical, Green Bay’s budget was far larger than Stevens Point’s. Dreyfus argued that this fiscal inequity could not be justified and it was evidence that the CCHE had failed to coordinate the two systems’ programs and budgets. He concluded his testimony with the observation that “The best way to eliminate the need to coordinate the systems is to . . . merge them.”^[19]

Governor Lucey officially ended his silence on February 4, 1971, when he outlined the major features of his biennial budget proposal. He strongly hinted that he would request a merger of the UW and WSU Systems by the simple expedient of eliminating funds for the CCHE and for the two separate system administrations from the budget. Lucey asserted that his primary motivation was to save the taxpayers’ money—he believed that up to $4 million could be saved in the first biennium and that future savings would be even greater as cooperation replaced competition. The Governor slammed the CCHE’s failure to prevent duplication of academic programs with the observation that after a bruising battle, both WSU-Stevens Point and UW-Madison had received permission to set up a School of Forestry. Lucey said bluntly, “the creation of satellite two-year campuses as a political trade-off [between the two systems] must end.”^[20]

He also justified his recommendation by pointing out that undergraduate education in the WSU was almost identical to that provided by UW-Green Bay and UW-Parkside, yet the latter two were much more generously financed. Since undergraduate education was equal in quality throughout the state’s universities, Lucey believed it was time to issue a University of Wisconsin degree to all graduates and, thus, end the myth that a UW diploma was more valuable than one from a State University.^[21]

Naturally, the merger proposal became one focal point of debate over the 1971-1973 budget. The CCHE staff and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents quickly and loudly voiced their opposition. Within a short time, the faculties of Madison, Green Bay, and Parkside also joined this chorus. The CCHE staff believed the Governor’s projected savings would not materialize and that he had greatly overestimated them, in any case. The UW opposition stemmed almost exclusively from a fear that the University’s reputation for high-quality education would be irreparably damaged by the merger.^[22] By contrast, the WSU regents gave unanimous support to the proposal after their Executive Director, Eugene McPhee, announced he favored the plan. The WSU faculty remained ambivalent for several weeks; however their organization, the Association of Wisconsin State University Faculties (AWSUF), eventually endorsed the measure. The WSU support represented a reversal of the negative position previously taken toward merger. In the past the State University leaders had feared that Madison would so thoroughly dominate a merged system that their situation would become worse, not better. Now, apparently, they believed Governor Lucey when he promised that the WSU would have parity with the University in the single board of regents. Support was also received from the faculty of the UW-Milwaukee, the Wisconsin United Auto Workers political action committee, and the Executive Board of the Wisconsin National Farmers Organization.^[23]

In the state legislature the attention focused primarily upon the Senate because the Governor needed at least four Republican votes, even if all thirteen Democrat Senators voted the party line. The large Democrat majority in the Assembly seemed certain to enact the merger/budget bill. Early on, the Senate Republicans offered their own merger plan, to which the Governor had serious objections. But gradually the two sides drew together through compromise—either as a result of direct negotiations between Lucey and the Republicans or as a result of trade-offs in the Joint Committee on Finance. Finally, on September 22, 1971, the Senate approved the 1971-1973 budget, which included merger approval, by the narrowest of margins, 17 to 16. About two weeks later the Assembly ratified the Senate’s decision by a comfortable 57 to 43 vote. The merger bill immediately combined the two boards of regents and their central administrations and authorized creation of a Merger Implementation Committee, which would draft a statute to govern the new University of Wisconsin System.^[24]

The measure contained several items of particular interest to the Centers and branch campuses. Prominent among these were the provisions that the new board of regents would operate all fourteen two-year campuses as a single institution and that no campus could be closed without the legislature’s approval. In addition, a potentially damaging clause that would have given the SBVTAE the authority to establish college transfer programs in its schools had been deleted.^[25]

This was not the first time that the SBVTAE had attempted to compete directly with the Center System and the branch campuses. While the legislators were debating the merger budget, the SBVTAE executive committee, in mid-February 1971, had endorsed a sweeping resolution: three Centers (Baraboo, Marshfield, Wausau) and one branch campus (Rice Lake) should be closed and their facilities turned over to the local vocational-technical district. In addition, careful study should be made of the Manitowoc, Marinette, and Sheboygan Centers to determine if they, too, should be taken over by a vocational school. Joseph Noll, President of the SBVTAE, supported these recommendations with the argument that the state could not afford both a college transfer campus and a vocational-technical school in communities with a limited potential student population. Noll asserted that a VTAE district could offer necessary college transfer courses without harm to its technical programs, thereby reversing the position he had taken just a few months earlier in testimony to the Kellett Commission. The following day, February 17, Noll elaborated on the recommendations when he presented them to the entire board of directors. He explained that the Mid-State Vocational, Technical and Adult Education School (Wisconsin Rapids) would centralize all of its health occupations courses at the Marshfield/Wood County Center, where it could collaborate with the Marshfield Clinic and Hospital. Noll described the Baraboo campus as “unsuccessful” in attracting sufficient students. Its facilities, he said, could be used as the nucleus of a vocational-technical operation which would serve the northern portion of the five counties in the Madison VTAE district. Likewise, either the Manitowoc or Sheboygan Center buildings could be employed in a similar manner by the Lakeshore VTAE district. In his remarks to the SBVTAE members Noll explained that these recommendations were trial balloons sent up to gauge the reaction from the public and the University of Wisconsin. Noll added that he expected the UW opposition to be strong—a prediction that proved very accurate. The full SBVTAE did not adopt the resolution, but it kept the issue alive by returning it to the executive committee for further study.^[26]

In a joint statement, Chancellor Adolfson and Vice Chancellor Durward Long mounted a strong counter offensive to keep the Center System intact. They argued that Noll’s proposal rested upon inflated enrollment estimates for the new schools because they included all of the currently enrolled Center students; Adolfson and Long believed that many, perhaps a majority, Center students would go directly to a four-year UW campus rather than enroll in VTAE-sponsored college transfer programs. The two men stressed the deliberate choice the host communities had made when they built their Centers and the commitment the state had made to equip and staff those facilities for a UW college transfer curriculum. To turn some Centers over to the SBVTAE would not only negate those agreements, but would override the strong public support of the Center System expressed at the Kellett Commission hearings. Long said it would make just as much sense for the Center System to take over some of the vocational-technical schools. Long also observed that the Centers enrollment problems would quickly disappear if their students’ tuition and fees were reduced to the VTAE level.^[27]

Noll floated these suggestions once more—in the last CCHE meeting he attended as President of the SBVTAE, in July 1971. During this session he said action should be taken “pretty damn quick” to demonstrate to legislators, who were then debating the merger budget, that the CCHE could make tough decisions. In his remarks Noll especially attacked the wheeling and dealing that had allowed the WSU-Stevens Point branch campus at Medford to be built. With a flourish Noll pronounced the Medford Campus “dead. It just has to lay down now.”^[28]Despite Noll’s impassioned remarks, his bold proposal eventually died a quiet death, along with the CCHE, when the merger budget was approved.^[29]

The merger of Wisconsin’s fourteen two-year campuses—the seven members of the Center System at Baraboo, Janesville, Marshfield, Sheboygan, Waukesha, Wausau, and West Bend; the four branch campuses at Fond du Lac, Medford, Rice Lake and Richland Center; and UW-Green Bay’s 3-M campuses at Manitowoc, Marinette, and Menasha—presented some knotty problems to the authors of the merger bill. Governor Lucey had taken note of these issues in his proposals when he suggested that there were at least three options from which the legislators could choose: 1) create an enlarged, separate system of two-year campuses that reported directly to a merged UW System administration, 2) attach the campuses to a nearby four-year institution, or 3) require the campuses to operate cooperatively with a nearby vocational school.^[30]

In June 1971, the CCHE staff released its analysis of these options. First, it noted that a “Super Center System” of fourteen campuses could readily be created without a large increase in central office costs, or the Center System central office functions could be returned to UW-Extension, which had operated the extension centers until 1964. Second, the central office could also be eliminated by attaching (nucleating) the two-year campuses to a nearby four-year public college, which would probably produce only a modest increase in the administrative costs of the parent institution. In its analysis of the third option, greater Center/VTAE cooperation, the CCHE staff conjectured that some savings could be achieved by eliminating duplicate programs and by expanding the VTAE college transfer programs, whose cost to the state was significantly less than that of the Centers.^[31]

The merger budget, which passed in October 1971, did not include any details about how the merger should be consummated. Consequently, in November 1971, the new UW System Board of Regents asked Attorney General Robert W. Warren to provide advice on three questions: 1) should the merger of the two-year campuses take place at once, 2) should the regents postpone the appointment of a new Center System chancellor to replace Adolfson, who had announced his intention to retire at the end of June, 1972, and 3) should the branch campuses now be designated as Centers? In less than a month the Attorney General responded. Warren advised that the merger of all fourteen campuses should occur immediately, but that they should continue to operate under their respective Chapters of the Wisconsin Statutes (UW—Chapter 36, WSU—Chapter 37) until the Merger Implementation Study Committee had written a new statute. He said, further, that the search for a successor to Adolfson could begin immediately and that the branch campuses would, indeed, become Centers when they were detached from their parent campuses and brought into the Center System. Accordingly, UW System President John Weaver asked the Regents during their December 1971 meeting for permission to appoint a committee which would specifically help the fourteen two-year institutions achieve merger and a search and screen committee to advise him on the selection of Adolfson’s successor. The Regents gave their unanimous permission.^[32]

President Weaver moved quickly to appoint both committees. The search and screen committee had the important task of finding someone who could engineer the Center System’s “merger within merger.” As his retirement approached the accolades for Adolfson’s long career mounted. He had begun his career with the Extension Centers in 1938 as a circuit-riding political science instructor at the Sheboygan and Fond du Lac Centers, while he worked on his doctorate at Madison. Six years later, in 1944, Adolfson had been appointed to head the Extension Division, a position he held for twenty years. During that tenure he maintained Wisconsin’s leading role in all aspects of Extension education; for example, he was among the first educators in the nation to urge the use of television to deliver educational programming. Then, in 1964, Adolfson had been chosen chancellor of the newly formed Center System. President Weaver noted in congratulatory remarks during Adolfson’s final regents meeting, in June 1972, that he had given eight years of exemplary leadership as Chancellor and that “the greatest monument that is left in his wake . . . is the University of Wisconsin Center System.”^[33]

Just moments later Weaver announced that Dr. Durward Long had been selected as Adolfson’s successor. But Long would be able to devote only a few days each month to the chancellor’s office until October 1, when he would finish his consultancy on the California Master Plan for Higher Education. Long’s academic training was in history, which he had taught at several southern universities, while gradually moving into administrative positions. Long had co-authored a book (PROTEST: Student Activism in America, 1970), and had written over two dozen history and higher education journal articles.^[34] Clearly, President Weaver had selected Long from among the search and screen committee’s candidates because of his previous experience as the Center System’s vice chancellor. Weaver believed Long’s familiarity with Wisconsin’s higher education system made him the best choice to preside over the immediate merger of the state’s fourteen two-year campuses. This would not be an easy task. The challenge not only involved implementing the merger, but also included overcoming the suspicions of the faculty of the seven Center System campuses to Long, personally, and wrapping up unresolved problems inherited from Adolfson.

The faculty of the seven Center System campuses had come to view Long as an opponent of strong faculty governance. Faculty were convinced that Long had been trying to dilute, perhaps even eliminate, the central role of their academic departments in governance and in recommending personnel actions. When Long, shortly after taking up his duties full time, rejected the recommendations of the Consolidation Task Force (CTF) for faculty governance and substituted his own charter, he confirmed the suspicions of many Center System faculty. Long’s difficulties were compounded by the complicated task of trying to bring together fourteen two-year campuses which had three quite different backgrounds and experiences.

Among the issues left unresolved when Adolfson retired was a bitter struggle between Dean George Condon and his faculty at the Rock County Center in Janesville. On February 21, 1972, the faculty had turned down by just one vote a resolution asking Condon to resign. Before the vote, those faculty who wanted to force Condon out made several allegations of misconduct against him: that he had ordered department chairmen not to hire Madison graduates or anyone under 40 to teach at Rock County because they would likely be too radical, that he had attempted to have two professors transferred or fired because of personality conflicts, and that he had refused to support a department’s recommended merit salary increase for a professor whose wife wrote for an underground newspaper. They also blamed the Dean for Rock’s slumping enrollment which was due, in part they alleged, to his failure to support strongly a student recruitment program among African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and poor whites. In March the number of anti-Condon faculty increased to 22 and they passed a resolution that labeled the Dean’s performance as “unacceptable.” Afterward, a faculty delegation visited Chancellor Adolfson and laid their case before him. After listening to them Adolfson indicated that Condon would not be replaced unless he resigned.^[35] Shortly after Long was appointed Chancellor, a Wisconsin State Journal reporter sought him out and asked what he intended to do about the situation. Long said he would thoroughly review the case and that he would assure that all parties received due process. Long added that it appeared the anti-Condon faculty had not followed university due process procedures because they had not informed Condon of the allegations against him prior to the initial no-confidence vote. He also noted that Condon apparently intended to stay because the Dean had appealed to the citizens of Rock County for support.^[36] This battle continued into the 1972 fall semester, when Condon resigned to take another position.^[37]

The Center System Consolidation Task Force held its initial meeting in February 1972. The CTF had 17 members—15 chosen from among the administrators, faculty, staff, and students of the two-year campuses, a UW System representative, and a representative of the four-year campuses. The latter, Dr. Harold Hutchison, Vice Chancellor of the UW-Platteville, was chosen by President Weaver to head the CTF. During this inaugural meeting, the CTF organized itself into four subcommittees, one for each of the major areas in its charge: Faculty Governance, Instructional Organization, Mission Statement, and Clientele. Further, the CTF decided to hold its subsequent sessions on various Center campuses, to distribute widely its minutes, and to allow ample time for reaction to its decisions. Weaver asked the CTF to submit its recommendations to him by the end of May.^[38]

Faculty governance immediately surfaced as the most prickly issue for the CTF to resolve. Faculty governance involved numerous problems which had to be solved wisely in order for the merged Center System to succeed. These problems concerned not just the faculty senate but also the division of decision-making authority among the faculty, the deans, and the Chancellor’s office, the amount of local autonomy for each Center in personnel and curricular decisions, and the role that the existing Center System academic departments ought to play in governance and decision-making.^[39]

The faculties of the seven Center System campuses naturally favored the existing governance structure, which was legislated in the UW statutes, and advocated expanding it to accommodate an additional seven campuses. The chairmen of the Center System academic departments lobbied the CTF hard to maintain the broad decision-making power of the departments in personnel and curricular matters. The department leaders stressed that this was necessary to maintain the transferability of Center System course credits and to maintain the high quality of the faculty. They feared that granting autonomy to each Center to make curricular and personnel decisions would result in a lowering of standards. In addition they noted that the Center System, between 1964 and 1969, had successfully operated a thirteen member institution via this structure.

The four Branch Campus faculties expressed strong opposition to simply expanding the existing Center System governance structure. They did not want most of the decision-making authority in the hands of system-wide academic departments. Their communications to the CTF argued that the departments would be very costly to operate and that it would be unwise to forge such a costly structure at a time when the pressure was on the University of Wisconsin to hold down spending. They also cited communication difficulties as mitigating against an efficient system-wide organization—a chairman could not possibly know each faculty member well enough to make an informed decision in personnel matters. Nor, could a chairman know the local factors which needed to be incorporated into curricular decisions at each Center. Consequently, they recommended that local campus committees be empowered to have the final say in personnel issues and in shaping the curriculum. In this structure, the academic departments would have primarily an advisory role.

The faculty of the three UW-Green Bay Centers—Manitowoc, Marinette, and Menasha/Fox Valley—told the CTF that they wanted more local authority than they had under Green Bay’s highly centralized administrative system. Under Green Bay’s tutelage the 3-M faculty had endured low salary increases, a lack of promotions, and curricular decisions which did not take into account local student needs. These faculties also thought their campus deans should participate in decision-making. But they did not oppose the academic departments also having a voice in both personnel and curricular issues. Thus the 3-M faculty, without spelling out a particular plan, took a position somewhere between giving exclusive authority to the academic departments or to local campus committees.^[40]

Cost was a major consideration for the CTF as it studied the alternatives for faculty governance. UW central administration had become alarmed when a cursory budget review revealed that the cost per student was higher at a majority of the two-year campuses, compared to freshman/sophomore instruction at the degree-granting institutions. President Weaver had urged the CTF to make a start toward whittling down the Center System figure by making a cost effective decision.

Accordingly, Steve Bennion of Vice President Dallas Peterson’s staff prepared a study which compared the costs of expanding the current Center System department structure with the cost of a system-wide divisional structure, which would be headed by four full-time divisional chairmen. Bennion estimated that the existing departments would spend about $153,000 in 1971-72, plus he predicted another $84,000 would have to be expended to serve seven additional Centers. Thus, Bennion’s best guess was that an enlarged academic department structure would require approximately $237,000 in the first year of merger. He compared that figure with the projected $130,000 cost of a systemwide divisional structure and concluded that at least $100,000 could be saved if the CTF opted for the divisions rather than for the departments.^[41]

Edward McClain, chairman of the Philosophy Department, who attended the CTF meeting at Rice Lake as the spokesman of the Center System department chairmen, sharply contested these figures. To start with, McClain noted, the 1971-72 estimates were far too high. For example, Bennion had pegged the Philosophy Department’s cost at $11,800 while McClain testified that he would actually spend $2,900. Then, Bennion had not included an amount to operate fourteen local campus executive committees under the divisional system. McClain and his colleagues believed that it would cost about $10,000 per campus to operate those committees, for a total of $140,000. When this amount was added to Bennion’s estimate of $130,000 to operate a systemwide divisional structure, retaining and expanding the present academic departments became the better bargain.^[42] After McClain addressed the CTF, the members spent an hour in heated discussion over whose figures were more accurate. Finally, CTF Chairman Hutchison ruled that the Task Force had to move on to other issues and should leave the shaping of a recommendation to the subcommittee on Faculty Governance. On May 22, 1972, right on schedule, Dr. Hutchison forwarded the final report of the Consolidation Task Force to President Weaver. In the transmittal letter, he reiterated that the most controversial issue had been whether the system-wide academic department structure of the Center System should be extended to fourteen campuses. Hutchison also noted that the CTF would not provide copies of the final report to anyone until Weaver had decided how and when he wished the report distributed.^[43]

The Task Forces’s final recommendation for faculty governance and instructional organization can only be described as complex. At each Center, the voting faculty were designated as those who had at least a half-time academic appointment and any staff persons granted “faculty status for purposes of governance.” The faculty would be assigned, according to academic discipline, to one of five academic divisions—Biological Sciences, Humanities, Performing and Visual Arts, Physical Sciences, or Social Sciences. One divisional representative would be elected from each to a Center Executive Committee, whose membership would be brought to a total of seven by the selection of a chairman and chairman-elect by the entire Center faculty. The Center Executive Committee had a great deal of power. In addition to handling routine matters such as preparing the agenda for faculty meetings and making policy recommendations to the local faculty, it would make recommendations to the Center dean on all faculty personnel matters including appointments, merit increases, promotions in rank, and the awarding of tenure. The local Executive Committee, likewise, held the primary decision-making authority on curricular issues. The Executive Committee was directed to seek the “advice” of the appropriate Discipline Resource Committee in both personnel and curricular matters, but there was no stipulation requiring further consultation should the Executive Committee decide to ignore that advice.^[44]

Each Center would elect at least one senator to the Center System Faculty Senate. A Center with more than 45 voting faculty would elect two senators and any Center which had more than 90 voting faculty would be entitled to a third senator. These senators would be joined by the five members of the Faculty Council, who would be chosen by the members of each of the academic divisions. The chairman of the Faculty Council would also chair the Faculty Senate, but neither the Chairman nor the Council members had voting rights in the Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate’s duties of course encompassed the responsibilities normally associated with faculty governance—the development and approval of policies “pertaining to areas of faculty concern, the establishment and staffing of committees, and supplying advice to the chancellor upon request.”^[45]

Even before the Consolidation Task Force sent its final report to President Weaver, the faculty and staff of the Centers were registering their approval or disapproval of its contents. Predictably, the reactions generally followed the lines laid down during the debate over governance. The faculty and staff of the former branch campuses strongly supported the CTF’s proposal because it placed a good deal of power in the hands of the individual Center Executive Committees, while the faculty of the original seven UW Centers strongly condemned the recommendations for precisely the same reason. After this brief flurry of initial comments, silence reigned because most of the faculty were on summer break. During the summer President Weaver’s staff studied carefully the CTF’s proposals, paying particular attention to the budget implications.^[46]

When Durward Long had been appointed Chancellor, in June, he was provided with the System administration’s analysis. President Weaver urged Long to have a plan of action mapped out so that it could be rapidly implemented after he assumed his Center System duties full time on October first. Accordingly, on October 4, 1972, Long distributed his personal proposal for moving the fourteen Centers toward final merger by the end of the year.^[47] Long noted that the Task Force deliberations had revealed “deep divisions which could not be resolved by any Solomon.” Reacting to the broadly expressed displeasure with the CTF’s elaborate and expensive structures for faculty governance and instructional organization, Long made bold to present his own plan and asked that it be accepted for a two-year trial period. Near the end of the trial period, a Charter Review Committee would be created to assess how well Long’s governance system had worked. He also sent along the CTF proposal so that faculty, staff, and student governments could choose between that plan and his. In a separate letter to the Deans, marked “confidential,” the Chancellor gave instructions for the two documents to be duplicated and distributed on October 11 and for the Deans to hold a special faculty meeting no later than October 13 to obtain the faculty’s preference. Long closed his memo with the pointed observation that, “It is imperative that we do everything possible to get acceptance of the alternative I am proposing and as little conflict as possible (underline added).”^[48]

Long’s proposed Charter greatly streamlined the CTF’s governance structure. His system-wide Collegium contained 22 voting representatives: 14 faculty members, 5 students, a dean, a librarian, and a student services representative. In place of the CTF’s robust instructional organization, Long proposed just 13 academic departments (reduced from 19) whose chairmen and advisory committees would advise Center-based committees on faculty personnel and curricular issues. Long’s plan, like that of the CTF, placed the primary responsibility for deciding these important faculty issues in the hands of faculty committees on each campus, rather than leaving it in the hands of the departments. At the local level the Charter provided for a campus collegium, which would also include students and professional staff members, a steering committee, and other committees necessary to carry out the collegium’s responsibilities to oversee the curriculum and to provide advice to the chancellor on personnel actions.^[49]

Late in the afternoon of October 13, Vice Chancellor Allan Hershfield telephoned each Dean to obtain the results of the special faculty meetings. When those were tallied, Long’s Charter had easily defeated the Consolidation Task Force plan. Long quickly relayed this news to President Weaver and asked him to place his Charter on the Board of Regent’s December agenda for approval.^[50]When he appeared before the Regent Education Committee to discuss the Charter and the process used to secure approval of it, Long chose his words carefully and explained that his plan “had support from a majority of faculty from a majority of the Centers.” While these words accurately described the result, they did not convey the strong reservations voiced by many faculty, including some who had supported the Charter, that their options had been limited to two seriously flawed documents and that they had been pressured to vote without adequate time to analyze the alternatives. However, the major objection to Long’s Charter was that the faculty had no input into drafting it, contrary to the statutory mandate that each UW faculty determine the form of its governance structure. Many faculty regarded Long’s assertion that there had not been sufficient time for consultation as yet another of his flagrant attacks upon faculty self-governance. The Regent resolution, itself, noted that the Center System personnel had been under pressure to act quickly on a governance structure so that the merger of the two-year campuses could be expeditiously completed. But the Regent resolution left the door open for future change in the Charter by referring to it as an interim structure which might require amendment once the state legislature had enacted the merger implementation law. The Board of Regents, after hearing the report of the Education Committee, unanimously approved the resolution, thus completing the Center System’s “merger within merger.”^[51]

While the Center System was concentrating on its own merger, the entire newly merged University of Wisconsin System was carefully watched to see if Governor Lucey’s plan for public higher education would actually save money. In this context of close scrutiny of all aspects of the University’s operation, the Center System repeatedly found itself under a budgetary microscope operated both by state and university officials. Actually, many of the Centers had operated for some time under a mandate to reduce their composite support index (CSI), which measured the average cost per student. For example, as noted earlier, one of then Vice Chancellor Long’s major tasks in the late 60s and early 70s had been to reduce the Center System’s CSI because it greatly exceeded that of the other UW campuses. And the four branch campuses had been under similar pressure from the WSU Board of Regents to reduce expenses; indeed, budget issues had delayed the construction of the Medford branch campus. Only the 3M Centers had escaped budgetary constraints, but that was primarily because Green Bay had kept those campuses’ expenses to the bare minimum.

Governor Lucey and the state legislature kept the pressure on the University to trim its budget by keeping the 1972-73 UW budget at the pre-merger level. On May 19, 1972, a joint meeting of the Board of Regents and the members of the State Board of Vocational, Technical and Adult Education (SBVTAE) investigated whether the UW System and the Technical Schools could reduce their respective costs through greater cooperation. Because the Center System campuses were most like the Technical Schools, they naturally became a focal point of this discussion. In fact, the SBVTAE pressed the regents hard on the question of whether facilities could be shared by the Technical Schools and the Center campuses in Fond du Lac and Rice Lake. In Fond du Lac the Moraine Park Technical School lacked adequate space for its burgeoning enrollment while the adjacent Center was using just sixty percent of its capacity. The situation in Rice Lake was somewhat different—the Indianhead Technical School did not yet have its own campus and held classes at eight sites scattered around the city. The Barron County Center, too, had excess space and its enrollment projections suggested a steady or slightly declining enrollment. Thus, one solution to Indianhead’s problem could be renting space from the Center, which would enable it to consolidate its classes at just three sites.^[52]

During this same meeting the two boards also explored the feasibility of a complete merger of the Center System and the Vocational-Technical Schools. The consensus was that liberal arts Centers were not a good match for the Technical Schools and the state’s citizens would be ill-served by combining the two systems. Those who spoke against a merger used arguments that had been voiced many times in the past when the legislature or CCHE had considered the same issue. For example Gene Lehrmann, Executive Director of the SBVTAE, said that the philosophy and objectives of the two types of campuses were substantially different and that, consequently, they each attracted students with different educational and vocational objectives. Regent Bertram McNamara reiterated that when mergers had occurred, the academic track by far had overshadowed technical education. Other regents pointed out that the Center host communities had made a heavy financial commitment to provide a liberal arts education to area citizens, a commitment which could not be ignored in any merger discussion. While the participants concluded that a union was not desirable, they did agree that the Technical Schools and the University had to intensify their cooperation to avoid duplication in programs and over-building their facilities, especially in communities where sharing would be practical. They also agreed to set up a small liaison committee of two members from each board who would meet periodically to discuss issues of common concern.^[53]

Despite the agreements reached in May, in the fall the SBVTAE mounted a public campaign to obtain control over the Centers in Fond du Lac and Rice Lake. If successful, those Centers’ liberal arts courses would just be dropped. Burt Zien, the SBVTAE member who leaked this scheme to the press before officially presenting it to the UW, justified this proposition by explaining that UW-Oshkosh was just 20 miles from Fond du Lac and could easily accommodate students who might have gone to the Center. At Rice Lake the distance would be greater, but the Barron County Center students could go either to UW-Stout (50 miles) or UW-Eau Claire (60 miles).^[54]

Zien’s proposal elicited a prompt response from the University. Among the options discussed in internal communications between System administrators and Regents McNamara and Bernard Ziegler, who were the regent members of the Liaison Committee, were 1) push for a complete merger, which the legislature would have to approve, in the expectation that this preemptive counterattack would confound the SBVTAE, 2) curb duplication and competition between the Center System and the Technical Schools by requesting the legislature to clearly differentiate the two systems’ mission in a statute, and 3) counterattack by recommending that control over the three existing college-credit programs in the Technical Schools at Madison, Milwaukee, and Rhinelander (Nicolet) be transferred to the Center System.^[55] By the time the liaison committee met in late October, both the VTAE and UW positions had been well aired in the state press. During that meeting Zien pressed hard the proposal that the two Centers be turned over to their respective VTAE districts. Regent McNamara repeatedly parried Zien’s thrusts with the assertion that this was not a simple take-it-or-leave-it proposition, for its consequences would affect all of higher education in Wisconsin. The Board of Regents, McNamara said, needed more time to consider the ramifications of such a transfer. By the end of the session, the two SBVTAE representatives’ ardor for the takeover had subsided considerably.^[56]

In the midst of this furor, President Weaver and Executive Director Lehrmann quietly established three joint administrative committees: the Joint Administrative Committee on Academic Programs (JACAP), the Joint Administrative Committee on Continuing Education (JACCE), and the Joint Administrative Committee on Physical Facilities (JACPF). All three, of course, were designed to increase cooperation between the UW and the Technical School systems. The first fruits of these endeavors appeared in December 1972 when the Board of Regents approved a proposal to permit the renting of Center facilities to the technical school districts in Fond du Lac and Rice Lake. The proposal also included a plan to review the curriculums of the rival campuses to eliminate overlapping courses and a plan for a low fee experiment at the two Centers, which would reduce the UW tuition to the fee level of the Technical Schools, $80.00 rather than $500.00 per year. The SBVTAE accepted the entire proposal during its January 1973 meeting.^[57]

The low fee experiment ran for three years, from the Fall 1973 semester through the 1976 summer session. It provided an opportunity to test some theories about higher education in Wisconsin, especially whether the comparatively high UW tuition was forcing some students, who really desired a liberal arts education and a baccalaureate degree, to enroll in a technical school. A survey of the fall 1973 students at the Barron County and Fond du Lac Centers produced startling results which apparently confirmed the belief that high tuition was denying many students access to the University. Three hundred additional students had been attracted by the low fees and they pushed up the enrollment at these Centers dramatically (23% at Barron, 47% at Fond du Lac), while the entire Center System saw just a seven percent increase. However, a later study by Professor W. Lee Hansen of UW-Madison’s Department of Economics concluded that the sharp increase in enrollment at the two Centers could not be ascribed solely to the low fees. Hansen discovered that convenient location was just as significant as the low fees in influencing students’ decisions to enroll. He noted that both the Indianhead and Moraine Park Technical Schools had also experienced a surge in enrollment coincident with that of the Centers. Hansen’s observation that the experiment cost the University about $600,000 in lost tuition revenue, which other Centers and other UW campuses had to cover from their revenues, no doubt carried a great deal of weight when the decision was made in 1976 not to continue the project.^[58]

In the early months of 1973, as Governor Lucey and his staff worked on the 1973-1975 biennial budget, they issued a governor’s policy paper which focused upon the Center System. Following tradition, they had sent the paper to the Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct a fiscal analysis. The LAB’s report began by noting that the merged Center System’s average cost of instruction for each full time student (this figure is the “composite support index” or CSI), had ballooned from a pre-merger $1,720 to $1,880, an increase of $160 per student. This increase had arisen primarily from three factors—the much higher CSI of the four former WSU branch campuses ($2,280), a decline in enrollment at some Centers, and the high inflation rate. The LAB also noted that the Center System’s CSI was several hundred dollars per student higher than Madison’s and Milwaukee’s ($1,470), or that of the former WSU campuses ($1,320), for freshman and sophomore instruction.

Having laid out the numbers, the LAB report proceeded to analyze five alternatives for helping the Center System to reduce its operating budget. Two of the possible options concerned the Centers and the VTAE schools: should the two systems be merged or, a much less drastic remedy, required to coordinate better their respective course offerings and facilities usage, where a Center and a VTAE school were in close proximity? With regard to a merger, the LAB candidly observed that such a proposal would surely increase, not decrease, tensions between the SBVTAE and the Board of Regents because both would fight hard to gain control over the merged institution. Requiring more Centers/VTAE cooperation appeared to be both a reasonable and an achievable objective. However, the LAB reminded its readers of the very recent struggle between the Board of Regents and the SBVTAE over how best to solve the VTAE’s shortage of space in Fond du Lac and Rice Lake. The joint discussions of the two governing boards, at least at the outset, had produced more controversy than cooperation. An obvious third option would be to close the five lowest-enrollment, highest-cost Centers. But the LAB study observed that in the past individual UW Centers with similar enrollments had been able to operate at a lower cost, so there was certainly a possibility that these five Centers (Medford, Richland, Barron County, Baraboo, and Fond du Lac) could reduce their CSI. Indeed, the fourth alternative suggested that costs could be reduced through a combination of increasing enrollments, increasing the faculty’s teaching load, and decreasing support staff, perhaps by pairing Centers to share a dean, a business manager, and/or a student affairs director. The fifth LAB alternative—acknowledging the public service mission of the Centers and removing its cost from the instructional budget—was the only new proposal. But the removal of the almost insignificant $76,000 the Center System spent each year on its public service activities would have had a negligible impact upon the average CSI.

The LAB also discussed some policy changes the state government or the Board of Regents could make to assist the Center System. For example, the state could authorize the University to charge a significantly lower tuition at all Centers, which would presumably increase their enrollments. However, the reduced tuition income would have to be made up through tuition increases at the other UW institutions or by increased state funding specifically for the Center System. Either of these options would pit the Centers against the rest of the University in what no doubt would become a bruising battle. A perhaps less controversial policy change would be to include the Centers as active participants in a “regents statewide university,” which was then under discussion. If that was done, the Center System would have to work more closely with UW Extension and would need to have its mission amended to include the authority to offer more adult and continuing education programs and even more public service activities. The proposed regents statewide university was yet another revival of the Wisconsin Idea-the obligation of the University to provide a variety of educational opportunities and information to citizens throughout the state. The LAB, in commenting positively on the Centers’ potential role in providing credits toward a regents degree, said it made sense to utilize existing facilities rather than building new ones. But the LAB also issued a caution, if the Center System had to develop new programs to fulfill a new mission, those programs might also tum out to be high cost and compound the problem rather than solving it.Finally, to conclude its analysis, the LAB presented some numbers and commented upon the impact various budget reductions would have upon the Centers. For the Center System to lower its average CSI in the 1973-75 biennium to its pre-merger level, over $1.3 million would have to be excised from its budget, a reduction of 8.52% over two years. The LAB observed that such drastic medicine, administered in a short time, could devastate the institution. So, instead, it recommended that the Center System be required to give up a lesser amount each year of the biennium, either $50.00 per student or $30.00 per student, for a cumulative budget reduction, respectively, of $839,700 or $503,820. In its concluding comments, the LAB backed a suggestion in the governor’s policy paper that each individual Center be required to bring its CSI reasonably close to the Center System composite average CSI, but it did not recommend an acceptable deviation from that figure. From all of these options and analysis, the policymakers in the state government and in the University would shape their decisions.^[59]

In mid May 1973 Chancellor Long made the startling announcement that he would leave his post at the end of September, after just a year on the job, to move to California to become a vice president at Berkeley. Long explained that he made this early announcement so that a successor might be selected by the time he departed.^[60] Many faculty cheered Long’s announcement. They felt that he had trampled on their traditional rights with his Charter; with his unilateral decision to telescope 19 academic departments into 13; and with continuing budget cuts, most of which came from reducing the number of faculty positions and increasing the faculty’s teaching loadall decisions made without any consultation with a faculty committee. The record also reveals that Long had some problems with System administrators. For example, in June, President Weaver expressed his amazement when Long complained that he had not received a salary increase for the few months that he would serve in fiscal 1974. Weaver wrote that it never occurred to him that Long “… would expect an increase in salary for a year subsequent to your announcement of your resignation. There is no way, I would have thought you would have understood, that I could have persuaded the Board to approve such an action.” On another occasion, when Weaver was writing a recommendation for Long, he cautioned the search committee to consider whether Long had “the sensitivity to handle the great range of personal relationships … ” a college presidency requires, because he has an aggressive and hard-hitting administrative style which causes him sometimes “to run a little roughshod over people.” On the positive side, Weaver described Long as “extremely bright in his analysis of problems,” particularly in budgeting, and as an administrator who would make decisions and keep things moving.^[61]

Because there were so many unanswered budget questions about the Center System, President Weaver did not follow Chancellor Long’s suggestion to immediately initiate the search for his successor. Instead, the Board of Regents accepted Weaver’s recommendation that an acting chancellor be appointed to serve until the various pieces of the budget puzzle had been sorted out.

Rather quickly, the System administrators also put aside Long’s proposal that the Centers just be given more time to bring their budget under control because this proposal would require additional staff in the central office, especially in the business and payroll areas. Naturally, Weaver did not want any expansion to occur, even if in the long run it might prove a reasonable investment. Instead, some believed that the Center System administration ought to be remerged-with Extension’s administration.

UW-Stevens Point Chancellor Lee Dreyfus explored this option at length in his keynote speech to the 1973 annual Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce convention. As Dreyfus saw it, such a move would restore statewide visibility to Extension’s outreach efforts and would provide important administrative savings to the Center System.^[62] But Dreyfus’s option would raise anew the old issue of a blurred identity for both the Center System and Extension-would the merged institution’s major mission be college credit courses or non-credit adult education?

During the summer another plan emerged, one that seemed to provide help for both the Center System and Extension and allowed each to continue its special mission. This plan would create a new office of Provost for University Outreach and place both Extension and the Center System under its administrative umbrella. This plan would foster Weaver’s desire to reinvigorate the Wisconsin Idea and would permit Extension to provide sorely needed business operations and payroll services to the Center System without an actual merger. Indeed, this option seemed brilliant—Extension would be spared the necessity of paring its administrative staff and the Centers would receive vital services at a far lower cost than by expanding its central office.

Also under discussion during the summer of 1973 were two very drastic propositions. One was “nucleation.” Nucleation would dissolve the Center System and attach a Center, or perhaps two, to a nearby four-year UW institution. Thus, the Centers’ high administrative expenses and CSI would disappear into the averages of the parent campuses. The other drastic solution would leave the Center System intact, but with fewer than fourteen members. This option would have the Board of Regents request that the state legislature, as required by the merger law, approve the closing of the highest-cost, lowest-enrollment Centers. Naturally this would reduce the Center System’s budget, but it would also raise the specter that future budget difficulties could trigger more closures.^[63]

During June and July President Weaver, his advisers, and Chancellor Long and his staff studied the various options for reducing the Center System’s expenses. Their deliberations took place amid strong and frequently voiced expectations that the University’s 1973-1975 biennial budget had to at least hold the line on spending, to support Governor Lucey’s prediction that merger would save money. In the materials he sent to the members of the Board of Regents a few days before their August 1973 meeting, Weaver recommended creation of an office of Provost for University Outreach, which would oversee both the Center System and Extension. In an accompanying paper, Senior Vice President Donald Smith explained that this plan would immediately merge the budgeting, purchasing, and payroll operations of the two institutions to eliminate any need to expand the Center System’s central office and, at the same time, utilize more fully the Extension staff. Indeed, Smith believed, the projected savings would be sufficient to finance the Provost’s office for two to four years, during which time plans could be made and carried out to better coordinate the University’s outreach programs. Smith also explained that an outright merger of the two units had been rejected because it “could in the end prove more costly,” especially in terms of lower morale.^[64]

In presenting the Provost proposal to the Regents, President Weaver explained that nucleation had not been pursued because it would totally destroy the progress the Center System had made within the past year toward “merger within merger” and because the WSU branch campus structure had proven only”erratically successful in holding down costs.” The Center System, Weaver argued, deserved an opportunity to demonstrate that it could bring its costs under control. The Provost for Outreach option provided that opportunity with the least alteration to the existing Extension and Center System structures. In addition, this plan held the prospect for considerable long range administrative savings.^[65]

Chancellor Long, however, spoke against the President’s proposal. He argued that the Provost’s office was unnecessary because the Center System had already made great strides by reducing its biennial budget request by half a million dollars and by operating fourteen campuses with about the same number of central office staff who had previously managed just seven Centers. Long felt that the proposed plan sent a signal that the Center System could not properly manage itself and he insisted that implication was not true. Despite Long’s plea for delay, the Regents only briefly discussed Weaver’s recommendation and then unanimously approved it.^[66]

Agreement on a new administrative arrangement did not automatically remove the Center System from intense budget scrutiny. The legislature and governor had included in the biennial budget requirement that the Regents and System Administration study all UW institutions to determine whether any of them should be closed because of high operating costs and/ or low enrollments. Five Centers-Barron County, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Medford, and Richland-qualified for special scrutiny because of their unreasonably high CSis, as did four baccalaureate institutions—Platteville, River Falls, Stout, and Superior. The Baraboo/Sauk County Center was added to this list when its fall 1973 enrollment plummeted from 301 to 267 students.^[67]

The Regents scrutinized the six high cost/low enrollment Centers via a mission hearing held on each campus. The public was invited to testify at these hearings. These sessions elicited a great deal of support for the six Centers. The citizens’ testimonies reiterated that students saved a significant sum by beginning their college education while living at home, that smaller classes provided more individual instruction, and that the quality of instruction was excellent. In addition, adult (or non-traditional) students testified that they could handle a few classes each semester and still maintain their work and family obligations. Without a Center, they said, they would not have been able to attend college.^[68]

These hearings also brought forth suggestions of alternate solutions to the Center System’s low enrollment problems. At Baraboo, for example, Leo Rodems, a former CCHE member, pushed the idea that capping the enrollment at Madison and Milwaukee would necessarily increase enrollments in the Centers and at the four-year campuses. Some witnesses pleaded for the low tuition program, which was just beginning in Rice Lake and Fond du Lac, to be extended to all Center campuses. Lowering the Center tuition to the VTAE level would enable many more students to afford to attend a Center. Richland’s Acting Dean Marjorie Wallace urged that the Regents lift the 72 credit rule, which required Center students to transfer when they reached 72 credits, because some students could legitimately earn more than 72 credits toward their baccalaureate degrees at a Center.^[69]

While public attention was focused on the mission hearings, System administrators worked with Center System leaders to prepare a greatly pared down biennial budget and to demonstrate that closing a Center would save very little money. For example, the state potentially could save $415,000 annually by closing down the Fond du Lac Center. But, the analysts pointed out this amount had to be adjusted by the additional expenses incurred when tenured faculty were employed by another Center ($189,917) and when students paid more to attend another UW institution ($156,000). And Fond du Lac County would be saddled with repaying a $3.3 million debt. Indeed, the investigators speculated that the state might be liable to repay $1.84 million of that debt, itself, if the Fond du Lac Center buildings were no longer used for educational purposes because the state had endorsed the county’s Title I grant proposal for that sum. If this came to pass, the state would have to wait several years before realizing any fiscal benefit from shutting down the Fond du Lac Center. Finally, the economic impact report noted that the host community would suffer an annual economic loss very close to $3.0 million. The numbers for the other five Centers included in the analysis-Baraboo/Sauk County, Barron County, Manitowoc, Medford, and Richland-revealed similar results. The state could save a few hundred thousand dollars in each instance, but many costs would be laid upon someone else and the impact upon the host community would be devastating.^[70]

Ultimately, System Administration proposed that the Center System’s budget be gradually reduced by about $1.5 million. Large segments of this sum would be drawn from three major areas. First, the Center System would repay UW System $458,000 through adjustments in the enrollment funding formula. Second, increasing the faculty teaching load at the ten former UW Centers from nine to twelve credit hours per semester would save $409,000. In addition, som, instructional dollars would be saved by offering low enrollment courses less frequently and by eliminating a few such courses from the curriculum. Third, savings of $207,000 would be realized from cutbacks in support programs, such as student services and maintenance. Lesser amounts would be saved from a variety of other efforts, such as the reduction of summer session programs by twenty percent and a reduction in the number of promotions to associate and full professor by ninety percent. If all of these plans came to fruition, the impact upon the cost per student at the most expensive Centers would be dramatic: Manitowoc’s cost per student would decline $100.00, Medford’s $422.00, and Richland’s $831.00. In addition, the Center System’s composite CSI would be significantly reduced.^[71]

In late August 1973, the final details were worked out to appoint Barron County Dean John Meggers the acting chancellor of the Center System when Chancellor Long departed for California. Meggers, a native of Sheboygan, had earned his undergraduate degree from Oshkosh and had later completed both his master’s and doctorate at Madison. Because Meggers would be spending much time away from his family in Rice Lake, President Weaver decided that he should receive the full salary and exercise the full authority of a chancellor. System administration also agreed to provide extra staff support for the special projects the central office would have to undertake to accommodate the budget reductions. Dr. Meggers’ appointment ·was officially announced at the September 1973 Board of Regents meeting.^[72]

In December 1973, the Board of Regents adopted a resolution, requested by Acting Chancellor Meggers, that promised no Center would be closed during the 1973-1975 biennium. However, Regent support beyond the end of the biennium was contingent upon two conditions or “tripwires,” as they were quickly labelled. First, if the average cost per student for the entire Center System exceeded the average costs for a comparable group of two-year university centers, the Regents would reassess their continued support. Second, any individual Center whose average cost per student exceeded the Center System average by 20% or more for two consecutive years would be subjected to special scrutiny.^[73]

Naturally, Acting Chancellor Meggers immediately focused most of his attention upon plans to assure that no individual Center snagged the 120% tripwire set by the Board of Regents. But the prospect that Medford could avoid setting off that alarm was especially bleak-its cost per student was the highest in the Center System and its fall 1973 enrollment numbers just 131 students. Meggers’ own former Center, Barron County, despite its healthy 1973—74 enrollment of 506 students, was perilously close to the 120% CSI tripwire, as was Richland, whose fall 1973 enrollment totalled 300.^[74]

During the summer months of 1974 the Chancellor’s Search and Screen Committee worked hard to fulfill its responsibility to recommend to President Weaver several candidates for the Center System’s vacant position. Acting Chancellor Meggers aggressively sought the appointment, but ultimately Dr. Edward B. Fort, the Superintendent of Schools in Sacramento, California, was selected. From the list of candidates forwarded by the screening committee, Weaver had interviewed only Meggers and Fort. Weaver tried to assuage Meggers’ disappointment by writing him that the decision was “a narrow judgement call” and that it in no respect reflected a lack of confidence in Meggers’ leadership ability.^[75] Indeed, behind the scenes, Weaver was poised to appoint Meggers in the event that Fort could not secure a release from his contract in Sacramento.^[76]

Weaver announced Fort’s appointment on August 13, 1974, and the Board of Regents confirmed the decision during its September session. The new chancellor assumed his duties at the beginning of October and Acting Chancellor Meggers returned to his duties as dean of the Barron County Center. Edward Fort, a native of Detroit, had earned his baccalaureate and master’s degrees from a hometown institution, Wayne State University. He earned his doctorate, in English, from the University of California at Berkeley.Fort had gained broad experience as a teacher and administrator in the Detroit public schools, prior to becoming the head of the Sacramento public school system. In his remarks describing Dr. Fort’s qualifications to the Regents, President Weaver stressed that Fort had acquired “substantial administrative experience and budget management capabilities” that would be put to good use in the Center system. Most noteworthy, of course, was the fact that Ed Fort was an African-American, the first black to be appointed to head an institution within the University of Wisconsin System.^[77]

In early November 1974, while Chancellor Fort worked hard to grasp the complexities of the Center System, Governor Patrick Lucey overwhelmed his Republican challenger, William Dyke, to capture a second four-year term. During the campaign, which featured a series of debates between Lucey and Dyke, the candidates focused primarily upon economic issues. A brief Arab-Israeli war in the waning months of 1973 had convinced the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to place an embargo upon sales of crude oil to the United States to punish the Americans for their lop-sided support of Israel during repeated Middle East crises. The effect of this embargo, even though it lasted just five months, was dramatic. Prices for petroleum products leaped 350% almost overnight. The ripple effect of this tremendous upsurge in oil prices looked ominous for the nation’s economy-a leap in the inflation rate (1973—6%, 1974-11 %), a rise in unemployment, and eventually a slowdown in the entire economy. Indeed, a long recession began in 1975.^[78]

Consequently, economic issues were very much on the minds of Wisconsin voters, who expected to hear from the candidates how they would meet the constitutional requirement that the state budget be balanced. Once again the University of Wisconsin did not figure as an important issue in the campaign. Indeed, the only comment Governor Lucey made about the University came during one of the debates in response to a question about the 1975-1977 biennial budget. On that occasion, he said that he would not include in his budget proposal, if reelected, money to offset a tuition decrease suggested by the Board of Regents. The Regents’ formula was designed to hold the level of tuition at twenty-five percent of instructional costs, but Lucey said that UW students would have to bear their share of the economic pain that loomed on the horizon. When his turn to respond came, candidate Dyke tersely agreed with the Governor’s assessment of the Regents’ request.^[79] In view of the general economic climate, it seemed clear that the University System would experience other blows to its 1975-1977 budget proposal by the time Governor Lucey and the legislature finished their work.