Wisconsin’s Love Affair with Its Technical Colleges: Seventh and Forty-Third, Wisconsin

Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri

Executive Summary

Wisconsin funds its two public higher-education sectors very differently. In fiscal 2025 the state and local governments provided $14,099 per full-time-equivalent student to the public two-year sector, the Wisconsin Technical College System, seventh in the nation. The public four-year sector, the Universities of Wisconsin, received $6,974 per student, forty-third. For every taxpayer dollar supporting a technical college student, forty-nine cents supported a university student. Nationally, the two sectors receive roughly equal public support per student.

Mission does not explain the gap. Wisconsin’s technical colleges are unusually occupational: 96 percent of their sub-baccalaureate awards are in career and technical fields, second highest in the nation, while liberal arts and general studies account for less than 3 percent. That mix can raise costs. Even after allowing for it, the allocation remains extreme. Across several comparison groups of eleven to thirteen states with similar two-year missions, Wisconsin remains first or second in two-year support and seventh to tenth in four-year support. Wisconsin allocates just under fifty cents to its four-year sector for each two-year dollar; the median ratio in the matched comparisons ranges from eighty-five cents to $1.28.

The better-funded sector also has more taxing and capital authority. Wisconsin’s sixteen technical college districts may levy property taxes, issue debt, own their buildings, and ask voters to approve major capital projects. The Universities of Wisconsin have no levy, cannot issue their own debt, and do not own their buildings. Western Technical College received an answer on a $79.8 million referendum on election night. UW–La Crosse waited seven years and four state budgets for a science building.

The arrangement is politically durable in part because the two systems reach the state budget differently. Technical colleges have local districts, boards, employer networks, and visible capital projects in nearly every legislative district. Since 2015, hundreds of millions of dollars that once arrived through local technical-college levies have instead arrived as state property-tax relief aid. University support appears as spending. The budget rarely puts the two systems on the same page.

Wisconsin’s economy changed more than its higher-education settlement did. The state used the University of Wisconsin to help build the agricultural economy and created vocational education early for the industrial economy. Since then, the labor-market return to four-year education rose while Wisconsin’s public support for its four-year sector fell sharply relative to its two-year sector. Research, advanced human capital, professional education, and commercialization are central to the modern state economy.

Wisconsin’s problem is not stingy taxpayers. Combined support for public higher education has exceeded the median state for two decades. The problem is where the money goes: the public two-year sector is funded near the top nationally, the public four-year sector near the bottom, and the better-funded side also has more taxing and capital authority. Future budgets should rebalance toward the four-year sector rather than presume that a larger total higher-education budget is required. Tuition-setting should remain a Regents decision, separate from state appropriations. The Universities of Wisconsin should be able to issue their own revenue bonds for self-supporting projects, and appointed technical-college boards that tax and issue debt should face clearer democratic accountability.