THE LEAD: The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published a story about how the system president, Jay Rothman, had emailed the chancellors at the UW schools with some thoughts about the future. In that email, Rothman noted his support for several changes, including moving away from liberal arts programs at certain campuses:

As the University of Wisconsin System faced a dire fiscal situation, system President Jay Rothman suggested chancellors consider “shifting away” from liberal arts programs, particularly at campuses with low-income students.

In emails obtained by The Daily Cardinal, Rothman, a former law firm chairman and CEO with no higher education background before leading the UW System, told campus chancellors UW schools should seek a long-term path “to return to financial stability.”

“Consider shifting away from liberal arts programs to programs that are more career specific, particularly if the institution serves a large number of low-income students,” Rothman wrote in a list of recommendations sent Sept. 1.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a huge fan of student media, particularly the Daily Cardinal where I cut my journalistic teeth decades ago. I also spent the majority of my junior year bringing the paper back after it shut down under a six-figure debt, so, yes, I’m a fan of the place.)

THE FALLOUT: Rothman was not pleased with this reporting and took to Twitter/X to express that displeasure:

Interestingly enough this “egregiously false headline” and problematic “framing of its story” has not led anyone in the UW hierarchy to demand the Cardinal fix specific errors in the piece, according to the folks at the Cardinal:

(SIDE NOTE: The System has never been shy about asking for things to be fixed when a story is factually inaccurate. I remember a story that ran when I was at the Cardinal with the headline “Negligence Haunts Regents.” The public affairs guy called up our campus editor and politely asked for a fix, saying, “There’s really only two things wrong with the story. It’s in the headline: The word “negligence” and the word “haunts.”)

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE ON THE STORY:

First, it’s awesome journalism. I have no idea how the reporter got that piece of paper, but it speaks volumes about the importance of things like FOIA and open records acts, as well as having good sources. People have the ability to lie to you. Documents have an uncanny way of telling the truth. It’s a great story, a solid read and well sourced.

Second, the headline is not “egregiously false” based on exactly what Rothman wrote. It was “private” (email usually is, compared to him putting stuff on Twitter/X or making a public speech). It was a suggestion, not a mandate. It included the phrase “shift away.” It did say liberal arts was the thing from which shifting away should occur. The only MINOR argument might be between “low-income campuses” and those that serve low-income students, but at that point, you’re arguing about the type of bark that’s on the tree and ignoring the fact you’re in the forest.

Third, the story does contain a response from system spokesperson Mark Pitsch that put in Rothman’s two cents:

UW System spokesperson Mark Pitsch said Rothman has “consistently” stated he valued liberal arts education and shared the report having acknowledged some of its lessons “would not be applicable to the Universities of Wisconsin.”

“He did not suggest that chancellors move away from liberal arts programs,” Pitsch said. “However, as evidenced by the $32 million workforce proposal, the universities are seeking to expand capacity in high-growth STEM, health care, and business disciplines to meet workforce needs.”

As the story then notes, the email says something entirely different. As much as I don’t want to argue semantics, Pitsch is wrong here. Rothman DID suggest that in the email. To what degree he meant something else or failed to make something clear could be debated. Arguing that something didn’t happen when people can see the thing with their own eyes strains credulity.

Finally, there is a huge difference between “I don’t like the story” and “The story is wrong.” I can’t tell you how many people have called me over the years, screaming up a blue streak over a story that ran in the DN or the A-T or the Missourian, demanding we fix the mistakes in it. When I asked them to explain the errors that needed correcting, 99.99% of the time it came down to them not liking that we reported they cheated on their taxes, stole money, shot someone at a Taco Bell drive thru or some other thing that actually happened.

In one case, a student demanded a retraction because she had made several disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community in relation to changes made to Homecoming court. She threatened to sue because people were all over social media and email, telling her how horrible she was based on our reporting. When we dug into it, it turned out she said the stuff IN AN EMAIL TO THE PAPER and the reporter had actually done her a favor by not including some of the more egregious stuff she’d written.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE ON THE SITUATION: This is probably going to be a really unpopular position, but if you read the entirety of Rothman’s emails, he’s right about a lot of stuff he suggested in terms of how to do certain things and what needs to be done to re-calibrate the UW schools.

If you read the whole email (skipping the now-infamous item 13), you get a clear sense of a smart business person who is telling a bunch of people that it’s time to be smart about your approach to your campus.

Here is a basic summary of his points in a simple fashion that I think most folks with common sense would agree with:

FISCAL:

• Don’t build out insane, pie-in-the-sky programs and figure the money will come from somewhere.
• Plan based on what money you have, not what you hope to have.
• Collect money you’re owed.
• Don’t plan one year at a time for a hand-to-mouth approach. Plan for the long term and hold to it.
• If you’re going to keep stuff, make sure it’s worth it. That doesn’t mean everything has to be cost-neutral, but it does mean you can’t spend like a drunk sailor on leave and expect everything to be fine all the time.

TAKING ACTION:

• Do the hard stuff right away because it’s not going to get better by putting it off. Also, do it in one big swoop so that you don’t have everyone looking around each time a shoe drops. Drop all the shoes at once wherever possible and then rebuild confidence for those who are left.
• Tell people what is going on while it’s going on and be transparent. The more you hide, the worse it gets.
• Read your policies to figure out what you can and can’t do before you try something. Also, if those policies are from the Stone Age, update them so you aren’t hamstrung by them.

That covers most of what he’s saying. It’s good advice. Does that mean the campuses are following it? No. Does that mean those who have made cuts etc. have done it the right way? Um… heck no. Is that Rothman’s fault? Not a chance.

In terms of his look at what should and shouldn’t be offered, that’s a whole other can of worms, but as I noted in another post, most of the students and families I’ve met here and while enrolling my kid at college are worried about jobs and the cost of this whole process. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have liberal arts, or a broader liberal-arts education.

What it does mean is that just like everything else, liberal arts courses should have their tires kicked from time to time, as should the structure of any program to make sure it’s giving students what they need. I think in a lot of cases, general education courses and the departments they’ve been based in got used to a huge influx of students each term by the dint of merely being part of that system. The level of scrutiny was not there in regard to value for the students (in any sense of the word) and the answer was always the silver bullet of “Kids need liberal arts, so stop asking so many questions and go away.”

I know I benefited from a lot of my general education courses, ranging from the history course I took to understand my parents’ generation to the race, gender and ethnicity course I took through women’s studies. I also know I had more than a few classes where it felt like the professor got a “no-show job” through a Soprano’s associate and didn’t give a damn because the class was required and we all had to take it. (I tried to find a link for a clip but gave up when I remembered how the dialogue in this show would make the heads of my editors at Sage explode.)

A strong examination of liberal arts is not a bad thing and reasonable people can agree or disagree about it. However, everything starts with honesty, accuracy and transparency, which is something the Cardinal article brought to bear.