Madison – Earlier this month, the UW System Board of Regents met to approve tuition-rate hikes across the board for the 2025-26 school year. As a result, most of the system’s returning students, including its incoming freshman, will be paying 5 percent more for tuition than they entered the summer expecting to pay. Tuition increases will hit Senator Rob Stafsholt’s (R – New Richmond) constituents hard, with area schools in River Falls, Eau Claire, La Crosse, and Stout raising yearly tuition by an average of $402 per student.
The timing of the tuition increase raised eyebrows across the state as it corresponded with a historic increase to the UW System, paid for by Wisconsin’s taxpayers in the state budget that was adopted one week before the tuition hike. The announcement came as a particular surprise because the UW System had been in a near-constant state of outreach towards legislators during the budget process, yet somehow failed to mention their intention to raise tuition on Wisconsinites until after they secured their money from the state. In response to the non-transparent maneuvering by the UW System, Senator Stafsholt issued the following statement:
“I wasn’t impressed with the purposeful timing of the tuition increase announcement. Intentionally waiting until after we voted on the budget – with large increases to UW – to even mention a word about tuition increases lacks the professional courtesy I would have expected from UW as a whole. I am particularly disheartened that schools in our area, like UW-River Falls and UW-Stout, participated in this breach of trust, despite all the time and effort I have invested in cooperating with, supporting, and building relationships with the schools, their faculty, and their students.
“Over the last decade, UW schools have lost 16,000 students while increasing their payrolls by $700 million. Now the taxpayers have handed them a quarter of a billion dollars in new funding and they turn around to find their kids have been handed a 5 percent tuition hike as a thank you. The UW System acted in bad faith and against the interests of its students. I, and the taxpayers of our state, will not soon forget their deception. Their actions will unavoidably raise questions in the back of my mind during future funding discussions over whether I am being offered the full set of facts.”
Senator Stafsholt represents Wisconsin’s 10th Senate District, which includes all of Buffalo, Pepin, Pierce, and St. Croix counties, as well as portions of Dunn and Trempealeau counties.
