By: Representative Dan Knodl, 24th Assembly District, Wisconsin State Legislature
In early June, the Universities of Wisconsin approved yet another tuition increase for resident undergraduate students. It marks the fourth consecutive increase since the tuition freeze ended and comes after taxpayers have already provided more than $1 billion in various investments.
University leaders argue that higher costs are necessary to maintain quality, address inflation, and support campus operations. As I’ve argued before, those challenges are real, but Wisconsin families are facing those same pressures every day, and they don’t have the ability to ask someone else to cover the difference. When tuition continues to rise, students and parents deserve more than assurances that the money is being spent wisely. They deserve an answer to a critically important question: What are students actually getting for the money they spend?
For generations, Americans were told that a four-year college degree was the surest path to financial success. In many cases, that remains true. According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, workers with bachelor’s degrees earn substantially more than those whose education ended with high school and generally experience lower unemployment rates.
However, the same research shows that what a student studies matters enormously. Median earnings for workers with STEM degrees approach $100,000 annually, while graduates in arts and humanities fields earn substantially less on average. Researchers have found that earnings can vary widely depending on a student’s chosen major.
There is nothing wrong with studying history, philosophy, theater, art, education, or any other discipline. Arguably, every field contributes something valuable to society. Wisconsin needs teachers, artists, writers, and public servants, but students also deserve to understand the likely financial outcomes before spending tens of thousands of dollars to earn a degree.
Wisconsin taxpayers support our public universities to prepare students for success. When a student declares a major, universities should also clearly disclose whether that degree typically leads to a licensed profession, a specific occupational field, graduate study, or a broad range of career outcomes. If a degree is primarily an academic pursuit rather than a pathway to a specific profession, students deserve to know that on the front end, not after the tuition bills and student loan payments begin arriving.
Recent labor market data should concern every parent and student considering college. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that unemployment among recent college graduates reached approximately 5.7 percent by the end of 2025, while underemployment, graduates working in jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree, rose to roughly 42.5 percent, the highest level since 2020. Think about that for a moment.
More than four out of every ten recent college graduates are working in jobs that do not require the degree they spent years earning. For
students carrying student loan debt, that is a life-changing financial reality. Of note, many borrowers spend far longer than the traditional ten-year repayment period paying off student loans. Borrowers with graduate or professional degrees often remain in repayment for 15 to 25 years, and millions of Americans are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans that stretch repayment timelines even further. Using today’s undergraduate federal loan rate of 6.39%, a student borrowing $50,000 would repay approximately $68,000 with nearly $18,000
attributable to interest alone over 10 years.
This is why transparency matters. Two students may each graduate with $30,000 in student loan debt, but their financial futures can look dramatically different. A graduate entering a field with an $85,000 starting salary will experience that debt very differently than a graduate earning $42,000 per year. The amount borrowed may be identical, but the ability to repay it is not.
In 2023, the Universities of Wisconsin spent nearly half a million dollars on a systemwide rebranding effort. At the time, Board of Regents President Karen Walsh explained that the goal was to unite Wisconsin’s public universities behind a common mission: to make Wisconsin
“Future Ready. For All.”
Access and opportunity are worthy goals, but affordability is inseparable from access. When students are asked to spend, and often borrow, thousands of dollars to earn a degree, the value of that investment matters. A college education cannot truly be “For All” if rising costs and uncertain career outcomes leave graduates struggling to repay the debt they incurred to earn it.
If higher education is truly going to be “for all,” it must also be honest with all. Students deserve clear information about the likely costs, risks, and outcomes associated with the educational pathways they choose. The Universities of Wisconsin make some career outcome data available, but it is often scattered across multiple reports, dashboards, and databases. Why isn’t every major accompanied by a one-page disclosure showing average debt, median earnings, employment outcomes, and time-to-degree before a student declares that major? Families should not have to dig through federal databases and academic studies for information universities already possess.
If universities truly believe they are providing value, they should welcome greater transparency.
At a time when tuition continues to increase, transparency is not too much to ask. Wisconsin families deserve to know not only how much college costs, but also what they can reasonably expect in return.
