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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!