Funding and Autonomy in Wisconsin Public Higher Education: A Response to the Wisconsin Technical College System
Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri
Executive Summary
Wisconsin is not a low-support state for public higher education overall. What stands out is how the state divides support between its two public systems. Using comparable state and local operating support, Wisconsin ranked seventh-highest in support per FTE in its two-year sector in fiscal 2025, while its four-year sector ranked forty-third. The central question in this response is whether that conclusion changes when enrollment or funding is measured differently.
The paper first addresses a factual claim made by the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS): that CROWE’s original enrollment measure counted only “full-time equivalent associate degree students.” The published data do not support that claim. For six consecutive years, Wisconsin’s two-year FTE in the SHEEO data used by CROWE has matched WTCS’s own published systemwide FTE total exactly. In fiscal 2025, both report 64,451 FTE, while WTCS’s two associate-degree categories account for 50,750 FTE. The remaining 13,701 FTE—21.3 percent of the total—comes from other WTCS categories.
The paper then asks the broader question raised by WTCS: what happens if enrollment is measured by headcount rather than FTE? Using the same federal 12-month headcount measure for both sectors in every state substantially narrows Wisconsin’s internal funding gap. In fiscal 2024, Wisconsin’s four-year-to-two-year support ratio rises from 0.478 on an FTE basis to 0.922 on a headcount basis. But the national benchmark changes too: the median state rises from 1.056 to 1.548. Wisconsin therefore remains 40.5 percent below the national median and fourth-lowest among the 49 states with both public sectors.
The broader WTCS systemwide headcount of 293,904 is useful for describing the system’s reach, but it is not directly comparable to federal 12-month headcount or to a common systemwide measure for universities in Wisconsin and other states. A deliberately favorable sensitivity check for broader WTCS activity moves Wisconsin close to parity between its own two sectors, but still leaves it about 34 percent below the national median and eighth-lowest among 49 states.
The dollars must also be comparable. WTCS has compared roughly $867 million in technical-college public operating support with roughly $8 billion in the Universities of Wisconsin all-funds budget. Those are different measures: the university total includes tuition, federal research grants, residence-hall revenue, gifts, and other funds. When the same public-support definition is used for both sectors—and even when tuition is added to both—Wisconsin remains near the bottom nationally in its four-year-to-two-year funding ratio.
The policy conclusion is not that Wisconsin should pursue a mechanical funding ratio or cut technical-college appropriations. WTCS programs should continue to be evaluated on demand, costs, outcomes, and returns. But Wisconsin enters its next budget decision with its university sector in an unusually low relative funding position. CROWE therefore recommends giving greater priority to the Universities of Wisconsin as future public higher-education support grows.
Separately, the paper recommends giving the Board of Regents authority to issue non-state-obligation revenue bonds for self-supporting projects. Projects that can repay their own debt from project or program revenues should have a direct financing path rather than depending entirely on the state capital process.