[Academiadotorg]

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's Republican supporters can only vote in polls right now but his state's university faculty are already voting with their feet--

[Buckeye McFrog]

I know a Wisconsin alum.

When I worked with him he took a class at our local community college.

He said the community college had better instructors and he learned more.

[Boogieman]

I’m sure there are plenty of unemployed who would take a non-guaranteed job over no job at all.

[Trailerpark Badass]

I notice no numbers, just an anecdote (lie) from an academic's blog.

Where are these hordes of professors going for better jobs? is there some university system with enough openings to accommodate an "exodus?" I doubt it.

[Zathras]

Lets see how well this works when they TRY and live in the REAL Berkeley, CA.
“What do you mean housing is $2M+?”

[Norseman]

This is all overblown anyway. Wisconsin was one of the only states to enshrine tenure in state law. The legislature removed the grant of tenure from state law. Tenure still exists, and will continue to exist, so long as the governing board continues to keep it.

So professors leaving WI will be going to other schools with essentially the same level of tenure protection as the UW System now offers.

That said, if they’re too dumb to figure that out, better that they leave.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

For those not familiar with The University of Wisconsin System - it is a flagship campus at Madison and then a bunch of lesser two and four-year campuses located around the state. The system was integrated in 1970, and of late there has been a lot of controversy about separating UW Madison from the rest of the schools.

I attended UW Madison for 19 years. I'm not really slow, I earned three degrees there and worked in Madison between degrees.

I can say from experience that there is a ton of dead wood in the faculty there, and any threats of en masse departures are probably a good thing. Before the media swallows such a claim whole, you should look at the age distribution of the faculty, their tenure in cumulative years at UW, and look at the size of the cohort at the time they started, average attrition rates, etc. There could be a large number of folks hitting a magic number in their pension formula, their stock portfolios may have recovered enough that it is time to head to AZ or FL, etc. etc. etc. There could be many reasons why there are a large number of departures coinciding, which have nothing to do with proposed tenure changes or Gov. Walker's administration.

Anyone who has been around that University for any period of time has seen a great deal of funds wasted - there is room to pare back the budget, and to redesign the University to deliver an education utilizing technologies that will provide the same (or greater) benefit to more students for the same budget, perhaps less. So, good riddance to those who claim to want to leave on account of Walker and his proposals!