Rep. Kreibich must want a new job

I'm starting to think Rep. Robin Kreibich got rejected by the UW-Madison and is trying to get revenge. He is a graduate of the U of Minnesota. Were his grades good, but not quite good enough to get him into UW-Madison and now he wants to make sure someone like him is not rejected in the future? How else to explain his newest proposal?

According to Wispolitics, Rep. Kreibich (R-Eau Claire) has a bill out to require the university to spend two-thirds of its state funding in classrooms and guarantee admission to any Wisconsin student who graduates in the top 10 percent of a high school class with three years of math and science and an ACT score of at least 25. This proposal shouldn't get sent any farther than Rep. Kreibich's desk so he can look at every day to settle his craving for beating up on the UW.

This proposal does raise a serious question that I've seen asked before in some articles that needs to be answered. Does the legislature have the right to set regulations this detailed now that the state funds only 19 percent of UW-Madison's budget? There was a time when the state provided about half of the funding and at that point, there is more of a case to be made for the legislature getting to have a large say in how the UW runs its day-to-day affairs.

Of course the legislature is entitled to have a fair amount of input since even though support for the UW by the state has drastically declined, we are still talking about millions of dollars. But how much say should they have?

Rep. Kreibich's proposal would actually lower the admissions standards for UW-Madison and could cause a funding crisis for classroom space depending on where the students decide to go. The average ACT now of UW-Madison students is 27.5 and Margaret Lewis, associate vice president of government relations adds:

...66,000 students graduate from Wisconsin high schools each year. That means 6,600 students would be guaranteed entrance to the campus of their choice, under the bill. To put that in perspective, UW- Madison admitted 5,600 students last year.

Will Rep. Kreibich be unhappy until he has a seat at the table of the admissions board and gets to write the entire budget for the UW?

Since the legislature has done such a stellar job with the state budget during Rep. Kreibich's tenure there, you can imagine how much the UW is hoping to have the legislators doing the budget for the UW.

If Rep. Kreibich really feels like his work in the legislature is complete and he has time to work on the day-to-day operations of the UW, perhaps it's time he left the legislature and just applied for a job with the UW system.