Why Revenue Generation Can’t Solve the Crisis in Higher Education, Or, What’s That Smell?

The story reveals the untenable financial situation of public universities forced to become obsequious partners to corporations, the inadequacy of neoliberal solutions to the crisis in higher education, and the need for federal reinvestment. [...] In Wisconsin, this neoliberal vision has deeply threatened another with a long history: the Wisconsin Idea, the ideal that the beneficent impact of the University of Wisconsin would reach the furthest corners of the state’s population. [...] Indeed, the progressive architects of the Wisconsin Idea were motivated to fully articulate a vision of public good in large part by their suspicion of the power of corporate “trusts.” The Wisconsin Idea, according to sociologist Chad Goldberg, directed the university’s service to state government, the public, and democracy”—not to “private capital.”5 Comprehensive institutions like UWO fulfill th. [...] When he retired in 2014, Wells was celebrated for revitalizing UWO and fostering the economic development of the city of Oshkosh, the region, and the state: the gold standard for the twenty-first-century public university entrepreneur-administrator.12 Only after his retirement did it become clear that Wells was not an alchemist and that behind the regional university’s financial magic was a comple. [...] the University will support the operations of the Facility, the payment of debt service on the Bonds and any other liability owed by the Borrower to the Purchaser.” According to the criminal complaint, Sonnleitner further promised that “UWO would hold $10,000,000 of state funds as unrestricted assets to guarantee the loan” and that “any breach by UWO of its obligations in the guarantee would be an.