Research Universities at Risk

The Wisconsin Alumni Association’s UW Now livestream talks explore a wide variety of topics with UW leaders and experts. The program began in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but recent livestreams have covered tariffs, the national debt, wildfires, and conflicts around the globe.

The livestream has also looked at the ways that national and state politics affect UW–Madison. On June’s livestream, political scientist Ken Goldstein joined Craig Thompson ’91, UW–Madison’s vice chancellor for university relations, and host Mike Knetter for a discussion about the effect that public perception and government policies are having on research universities.

Since the start of 2025, governments at the state and national level have pushed policies that would undercut university funding, both in admissions and research.

Thompson described the important role that the federal government has had in nurturing universities, as well as the role that universities have had in growing America’s economy. The Trump administration’s announcement of cuts to research funding has put this symbiotic relationship in jeopardy, but so far, the administration has made more of an impact through sowing confusion than it has in pulling back actual dollars.

“The word that I really want to underscore is uncertainty,” Thompson said. “The actual cuts are significant but not dramatic yet. … But the rapidity with which the new terms are coming in, the things that they’re asking higher education to agree to … there’s still a lot in jeopardy.”

Despite the current danger, general survey questions can miss out on the positive emotional relationship that people have with specific universities.

Goldstein looked at public opinion surveys to see how attitudes drive politics. “From 2015 to 2023,” he said, “we’ve seen a little bit of a drop [in confidence in higher education] from Democrats, a little bit of a drop from independents, but Republicans have fallen off a cliff.

“My favorite [question] asks, ‘Are you better off or worse off because of the University of Wisconsin?’ ” The responses, he notes, show that people still believe that specific institutions are valuable. “That has not gone off a cliff.”

You can view the entire livestream, as well as previous episodes, at youtube.com/wisconsinalumni-association. To find out how you can advocate for legislative support for UW–Madison, visit uwalumni.com/advocate/.

Published in the Fall 2025 issue