Wisconsin remains near bottom in university support relative to technical colleges under alternative enrollment measures

MADISON, Wisconsin, Aug. 27, 2026 – The Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE) has released a response to the Wisconsin Technical College System’s critique of its Aug. 20 report on public support and financial authority in Wisconsin higher education.

The response addresses a factual question about the enrollment measure used in CROWE’s original interstate comparison and then asks a broader one: does the conclusion change if enrollment is measured differently?

The answer to the first question is clear. The full-time-equivalent (FTE) enrollment measure used in the original report was not limited to associate-degree students. For six consecutive years, Wisconsin’s two-year FTE in national higher-education finance data used in the original report has matched WTCS’s own published FTE total exactly. In fiscal 2025, both report 64,451 FTE, while WTCS’s two associate-degree categories account for 50,750. The remaining 13,701, 21.3 percent of the total, comes from other WTCS categories, e.g., technical diplomas and apprenticeship-related instruction, adult and vocational education, non-postsecondary adult education and English language learning, and community services.

“CROWE takes measurement seriously because policymakers should be able to make decisions using evidence that is comparable, transparent and reproducible,” said Ananth Seshadri, Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Distinguished Chair and CROWE Co-Director. “Our responsibility is to get the measurement right and apply the same rule everywhere, whether the result favors technical colleges, universities or neither. Wisconsin’s technical colleges are enormously important to the state. The question here is not their value. It is whether the evidence being used to allocate public resources answers the question policymakers think it answers.”

CROWE also examined the broader enrollment question raised by WTCS by replacing FTE with the same federal 12-month headcount measure for both public higher-education sectors in every state.

That change matters. It brings Wisconsin’s two systems much closer together. But it also changes the comparison states. On a common headcount basis, Wisconsin’s support for the four-year sector relative to the two-year sector remains 40.5 percent below the national median and fourth-lowest among the 49 states with both public two-year and four-year sectors.

“Headcount changes the Wisconsin comparison substantially, and that matters,” Seshadri said. “But the comparison states change too. If you change the ruler, you have to change it everywhere. Once the same rule is applied to both sectors in every state, Wisconsin remains near the bottom of the distribution in its support for the four-year sector relative to the two-year sector.”

Different enrollment measures answer different questions

The response also explains why very different estimates of technical-college support per student have appeared in the debate.

FTE adjusts enrollment for course load. Federal 12-month headcount counts each annual enrollee once within an institution. WTCS systemwide headcount is broader still and counts people enrolled across its instructional categories.

Those measures are useful for different purposes. They are not competing estimates of a single “true” funding level.

Part-time students are already included in FTE in proportion to their course load. WTCS’s broader headcount therefore does not add back part-time students omitted from the original measure. It answers a different question about the reach of the technical-college system.

“The issue is not whether those people count,” Seshadri said. “WTCS clearly reaches a very large number of people. The issue for an interstate comparison is whether the same kind of count exists for Wisconsin’s universities and for both sectors in every comparison state. Without comparable denominators, changing Wisconsin alone produces a different Wisconsin number, not a different national ranking.”

The paper also gives the broader-enrollment concern a deliberately favorable sensitivity check. Even under that assumption, Wisconsin remains well below the national benchmark.

Wisconsin needs both strong technical colleges and strong public universities

CROWE’s response does not question the importance of Wisconsin’s technical colleges. They provide applied training, work closely with employers and create opportunities for students across the state. WTCS has pointed to strong graduate employment, employer satisfaction and program demand as reasons for continued investment. Those outcomes matter.

Wisconsin can expand strong technical-college programs while also reconsidering the overall allocation between its two higher-education systems. Technical colleges and universities perform different and complementary functions. The policy question is not which system matters. It is how additional public resources should be divided between them.

The dollars have to be comparable too

The response also addresses comparisons between technical-college public operating support and the Universities of Wisconsin’s much larger all-funds budget.

Those are different measures. The university budget includes tuition, federal research grants, residence-hall revenue, gifts and other funds in addition to state support. CROWE’s interstate analysis instead applies the same definition of state and local public operating support to both sectors in every state.

The paper also repeats the comparison after adding tuition to both sectors. That narrows the measured difference between Wisconsin’s two sectors but does not change the basic interstate conclusion.

The larger issue is budget rigidity

The analysis does not argue that Wisconsin should pursue a particular funding ratio, and rebalancing future support does not require cutting existing technical-college appropriations.

Instead, CROWE concludes that Wisconsin’s persistent position as an interstate outlier is relevant to future budget decisions. As public higher-education support grows, the paper recommends giving greater priority to the Universities of Wisconsin while continuing to evaluate programs in both systems on costs, demand, outcomes, institutional priorities and returns.

CROWE recently documented a similar pattern in a very different setting: Badger Athletics. Football’s share of athletic-department spending remained remarkably stable for roughly two decades even as the economics of college football changed.

“We are seeing the same broader pattern in a very different setting,” Seshadri said. “Budgets are sticky. Historical allocations become tomorrow’s baselines. The state should hold its own higher-education allocations to the same standard. An inherited allocation is not evidence that it is the right allocation.”

A separate issue: university fiscal autonomy

The paper separately examines differences in the financial authority available to Wisconsin’s two public higher-education systems. Technical-college districts can levy local property taxes and issue capital debt directly, subject to statutory limits and review. Universities do not have comparable independent borrowing authority, even for projects capable of repaying debt from their own project or program revenues.

CROWE recommends giving the Board of Regents authority to issue non-state-obligation revenue bonds for self-supporting projects. If a university project can repay its own debt from its own revenues, UW should have a direct way to finance it. That authority would give universities greater fiscal autonomy without putting general state tax revenues behind the debt.

The case for program revenue-bonding authority stands on its own, separate from the funding comparison.

Please click the link for the full report: Funding and Autonomy in Wisconsin Public Higher Education: A Response to the Wisconsin Technical College System.

About CROWE

The Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE) was established in 2017 in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. CROWE supports and disseminates economic policy research from a market perspective, with a particular focus on Wisconsin and state-level policy. Its work combines original research, student engagement and public outreach.

For more information, visit crowe.wisc.edu.

For questions about the report, contact Ananth Seshadri at ananth.seshadri@wisc.edu.