A crowd of nearly 300 people packed a room at Grainger Hall on Wednesday to hear Chancellor Biddy Martin describe how UW-Madison will benefit from being restructured as a public authority as called for in the governor’s proposed budget.
Martin said the proposed changes offer the university a chance to better control its policies, costs and revenue and maintain the quality of the preeminent public research university that Wisconsin has built.
“I think it’s our responsibility to preserve the strength of this university, which has served the state of Wisconsin for over 150 years. That’s what I’m about,” Martin said. “Do we simply want to sit here every biennium and say, ‘Well, we got another cut. What are we going to cut? Who are we going to cut? How are we going to handle it?’ I don’t want to be the chancellor who simply did that over and over again. I want to try something that has the potential to preserve the quality of this university for the citizens of this state and for the wider world.”