My program could hire Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite (if he was still alive) to teach broadcast journalism, and they would have no vote on which broadcast news classes we offer because they aren’t PhDs with tenure. Make that make sense.
The instructors who teach the most in the Universities of Wisconsin System are currently blocked from having power. That means they have no say over how budgets are distributed, which classes are offered, which skills are taught, and who is hired or fired. That’s even though they interact with students the most, are most likely to teach skills courses, and are most likely to have industry backgrounds and ties that help students.
The power is consolidated in the hands of a few, elite tenured professors with PhDs who tend to be theorists. This needs to change. The UW needs to stop valuing degree over experience. The people with expertise in the fields offered to students are often blocked from having any voice. They also can’t be deans.
A new bill proposed by State Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk (co-founder of Wisconsin Right Now) would change this. What it simply does is broaden who can share power in the Universities of Wisconsin by simply giving more people a seat at the table (I first wrote about this issue in 2023. The article has many details about the law). I believe that the new bill should draw rare bipartisan support. It’s not about taking power from the profs. It’s about ensuring power sharing with the people who teach students the most. There are arguments for this change that should appeal to “both sides” in our divided state, including Republican leadership and Tony Evers. Here’s why.
- On the right, conservatives have been talking a lot about teaching workloads and getting people into classes more. Instructional academic staff (the people with no power under current practice) are already in classes the most. We focus on workforce development. We tend to have master’s degrees and extensive industry experience. In my program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I have taught journalism for 21 years, we teach skills courses. For example, I train students in investigative journalism and news reporting. I would think that conservatives would see value in elevating academic staff with industry training – who are working most closely on student needs in classrooms – to have a voice in the kinds of classes we teach. The professors who control these things now tend to be theorists and researchers, at least at my university. We are the teaching workhorses who interact with students the most, yet we have no say on things that help students.
- On the left, liberals will likely be moved to learn that many women and people of color are among those instructional academic staff who are blocked from powersharing. They have an impenetrable glass ceiling. This is wrong, and it’s out of step with how it’s done in other states. The new bill also follows guidance from The American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
In 2024, hundreds of academic staff were black, Asian, Latino, or of two or more races in the Universities of Wisconsin, yet they had no vote. Many academic staff are women. For years, in my program, the executive committee that controlled everything was almost entirely male, whereas the instructional academic staff who had no voice were almost entirely female. There are more than 5,500 instructional academic staff in the system.
Why This Needs to Change
Right now, at UW-Milwaukee, UW-Madison, UW-Parkside, UW-Eau Claire, and likely other universities, you need tenure (or a terminal degree) to sit on an executive committee. To get tenure, you generally need a PhD. A terminal degree means a person has achieved the highest possible educational credential in their field. Generally, that is a PhD. The currently practice values degree over industry or workforce development experience and focus.
While I personally prefer and value both theory and practice and want them to exist harmoniously, that’s not the case now. Simply put: Giving instructional academic staff more of a voice will shore up the universities’ workforce development mission. In my program, there were many divides between academic staff and tenured professors for years; they wanted to hire professors to teach things like global media theory, whereas we wanted to hire industry folks who could teach students how to edit video. They had a vote. We didn’t. They focused on getting more theorists. We wanted more practitioners to meet student needs. The students were paying a lot of tuition dollars expecting to get enough skills courses so they could get jobs and internships.
“Unfortunately, soon after this law was implemented in the 1970s, our universities narrowly defined who qualified as ‘faculty,’ which excluded many of the people who teach the most and who focus on workforce development. This resulted in a small and often like-minded collective of entrenched professors making important decisions in isolation,” the new bill’s co-sponsorship memorandum says. “Our bill fixes this exclusionary interpretation of law.”
How It Works Now
Let me explain how this works in the trenches.
Currently, my program is run by a distant executive committee in another department because we are all academic staff and were told we can’t sit on executive committees that run departments, so we can’t be a department. I am not disparaging our executive committee; they’re good people who listen to what we have to say. However, most do not have, say, backgrounds in journalism, public relations, or advertising industries (and, if they do, they don’t tend to be extensive). Yet they have the ultimate decision-making authority. This also occurred in an American sign language program, I am told. The program had to be run by professors in a distant department because they were academic staff, not Ph.D.s with tenure, even though the distant department’s professors had no training in, nor knowledge of, the world of hearing-challenged people.
The system is set up to reward hierarchy and degree, over practical experience in industry, and knowledge of a field. Look, instructional academic staff work very hard, and their voices are valuable. Please, Republicans AND Democrats, consider giving them one. Ultimately, it will help students and improve the quality of their education. And we can all agree on that, right?
Read the bill here:
Disclosure: Jessica McBride is a teaching faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her opinions are her own and do not represent the institution where she works.
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