Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich announced Monday that differential tuition will likely increase by $1,500 per student over the next four years, under the Blugold Commitment...Fifty percent of that money would hire 50 more faculty and staff members, 40 percent would provide financial aid, and 10 percent would support academic immersion programs. Levin-Stankevich said presenting to the Board of Regents in February wouldn't allow enough time to hire more than a couple of new faculty for next year. It would, however, allow the increased costs to be factored into financial aid. The increase of differential tuition could quickly produce results, he said...

A second test of the freight elevator at UW-Stout’s Price Commons showed no presence of asbestos. The elevator was cited in one of two complaints that prompted a recent Department of Commerce (DOC) inspection. The report, which listed 51 health and safety violations, was rescinded last week by the DOC so that it could be rewritten...

The Wisconsin state Department of Commerce is dealing with fallout from a recent report relating to violations at the University of Wisconsin-Stout campus. The Department of Commerce was forced to retract the report, which listed 51 occupational safety and health violations uncovered in a recent investigation. The investigation was spurred by asbestos-related concerns raised by employees at the school...

For UW-Stout students, going green in the dining hall now means more than choosing a salad for lunch. The university's dining service is participating in the Eco-Products million gallon challenge. Eco-Products is a company that's encouraging universities to go green to cut down on energy use. Right now, 100 percent of UW-Stout's take-out packaging for food and beverages can be composted...

Almost 86 percent of students who started at UW-Eau Claire in the fall of 2008 are still enrolled this fall, according to a presentation yesterday by Eric Jamelske, associate professor of economics. The 14 percent of students that didn't return to Eau Claire this year is what Jamelske is questioning. He wonders why Eau Claire is losing such a large number of students from their freshman to sophomore year...

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's student newspaper has sued the university and one of its officials to gain access to records of public meetings that UWM officials have refused to release. The UWM Post and Jonathan Anderson, editor in chief at the time the records were requested earlier this year, say UWM's heavy redacting of minutes and audio recordings of the meetings violates Wisconsin's open records law...At issue are records of meetings of the Union Policy Board, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court...

...UW-Eau Claire routinely posts information it receives from the city - such as details about calendar parking restrictions - on its Web site as a service to students, said Mike Rindo, the university's director of communications. He said the university didn't receive information about the State Street area street sweeping. Four students whose vehicles were towed registered complaints with the dean of students office, Rindo said...

...The report by the Pew Center on the States found that Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are also at grave risk. Double-digit budget gaps, rising unemployment, high foreclosure rates and built-in budget constraints are the key reasons. Wisconsin officials issued a statement late Wednesday saying the Pew report was inaccurate. Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Michael Morgan said the state has balanced its budget by cutting spending and raising revenue. It projects a $270 million budget surplus for the period ending July 1, 2011, Morgan said in his statement...

DOA Secretary Michael Morgan issued the following statement responding to a Pew Center report that Wisconsin is among the most fiscally challenged states in the country: "In no way can Wisconsin be compared to the nation's most financially troubled states, especially California...

State officials deny that Wisconsin’s budget is in dire straits. And they take issue with a report from yesterday that Wisconsin and Illinois share the nation’s ninth-worst budget crisis...The report said Wisconsinites can expect even fewer social services, higher college tuition, and more state employee furloughs at the very least...But state administration secretary Michael Morgan said Wisconsin’s no worse off than others, and the state’s plight was over-dramatized because it had relatively low unemployment rate before the recession...

Two Democratic lawmakers are asking election and UW System officials to determine if an event for Milwaukee County Executive and Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker violated state fundraising laws. Walker supporters gathered Nov. 2 in the Dreyfus Center, a property owned by UW-Stevens Point. State statutes prohibit candidates from fundraising in state-owned buildings. State Reps. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, and Amy Sue Vruwink, D-Milladore, have asked the Government Accountability Board and the UW System Board of Regents to investigate...

Scrambling to address revenue shortfalls, the hardest hit public universities most often chose to delay deferred maintenance projects, cut staff and reduce contingent faculty positions, according to a survey released today by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. But those institutions still have plenty of "strategic" thinking to do about long term solutions, the survey found...

More than two-thirds of the land-grant universities that responded to a national survey are considering overhauling their administrative structure or academic programs to deal with long-term declines in state appropriations and pessimism about the future financial health of their institutions, according to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities...

University of Minnesota leaders Wednesday released a draft conflict-of-interest policy that would ban faculty from a variety of questionable practices, including product endorsements and ghostwriting of research papers. If adopted, the policy would offer "comprehensive and unambiguous" guidance to the faculty, staff and students on how to avoid or handle conflicts, said Mark Rotenberg, the university's general counsel. At the same time, the policy would preserve many of the meaningful relationships that university researchers have with private industry, he said...