In the most recent Small Business Times Commercial Real Estate Spotlight by Andrew Weiland, Milwaukee County Supervisor Michael Mayo is quoted as saying he will work with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to use the county land in Wauwatosa (to build a research center).
The problem with the proposal to fragment UWM and send its pieces to other municipalities, such as Wauwatosa, is that it has been presented as necessary. In a document to the faculty concerning a so-called master plan, the document makes vague references to lack of "assignable" space. It then quickly goes on to state that UWM has to move the Engineering College. The use of such vague and in fact nonsensical statements like "assignable" makes this rather deceptive.
The fact is there is plenty of land on which one can build a new Engineering College. The area between Maryland and Cramer includes a vast wasteland consisting of concrete slabs and inefficient surface parking, along with a one-story 1940s Kunckle building. The physics building next to this concrete wasteland is falling apart and needs replacement sooner rather than later.
To accommodate these needs, a science/engineering complex can easily be built between Maryland and Cramer, and with 3,000 parking spaces underground, it will go a long way towards minimizing, if not solving the parking problems that the students desperately need solved.
The students who drive have to drive. They are forced to work 20 to 40 hours per week to pay the ever-escalating tuition and fees. The window of opportunity for them to take a class is rather small. Many of them just do not have time to take buses. So they are resigned to drive and get saddled with massive parking fines.
Then there is the statement by the UWM spokesperson about "green" space. This rather disingenuous reference to green space implies that this is somehow an environmentally friendly proposal, when in fact it is precisely the opposite. This is an urban area. Building an eight- to twelve-story complex between Maryland and Cramer avenues is much more friendly to the environment than fragmenting UWM helter-skelter.
The carbon emissions to transport the students back and forth will hardly be friendly to the environment.
Then there is the matter of a different use for the proposed county land that some in that area have in mind, including the preservation of pieces of that land in Wauwatosa for a true green space.
There are other pieces of land in the UWM area that are also available for building more offices, labs and classrooms. The areas near and around Chapman Hall similarly are made of concrete slabs and inefficient surface parking.
The Engleman Soccer Field and the inefficient surface parking is another area that can be put to better use. It is used about 10 times a year and is hardly an academic priority. It too, like baseball, can be done elsewhere in the city, a much simpler problem than transporting students to and from Wauwatosa many times during the day.
In addition, the College of Engineering and Applied Science is not the only college that needs more space. The Department of Letters and Science, which has expanded its programs with the addition of Ph.D. programs, also is in desperate need of quality space, labs and seminar rooms.
There is a reference in the article to the incubators for business. This is just a cover for hiring H1-visa engineers from other countries, and not to help Wisconsin kids go to graduate school. A CEO stated as much at the Public Policy Forum in January: to help economic development, this CEO proposed, the cap on H1 visas needs to be lifted. In my opinion, these plans are a cover for that.
One would think that at a university, one would rely on data to back up claims of contributing to economic development.
Just what are UW-Madison and UWM doing for economic development? Presidential candidates have made reference to the fact that jobs that have moved to China and India are gone for good. Even if that were not to be accepted, the proposals for competing globally all seem to point to advanced research and development, not lagging-edge product development, precisely what was shipped abroad.
To engage in advanced cutting-edge research and development, one needs not just a building, but graduate students from Wisconsin, not H1 cheap engineers.
At one count I did for UW-Madison, there were about 8,400 graduate students. Of these, only about 2,600 were from Wisconsin. In other words, there were about 6,000 students from outside of Wisconsin – about 3,000 from other states and 3,000 foreign graduate students.
A close look at the data as to what the tiny 2,600 Wisconsin graduate students were studying may well reveal that they were not in economic development-relevant areas like engineering and science. One may find that the number of Wisconsin graduate students pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering or science is rather dismally small.
Then there is the drain on the Wisconsin budget: educating 3,000 students from other states and 3,000 foreign students costs the state at least $300 million in direct costs, not to mention the lost opportunity costs of not using those funds to support tax cuts to lure business to the state.
This shows that the state is suffering from double jeopardy: the children of its taxpayers are cleansed from graduate programs and they are being charged the cost of supporting the economies of other states and countries.
UWM has a much smaller graduate program, but it is not all that different: not many
Wisconsin kids in graduate programs in science or engineering. The reasons that Wisconsin students are not in graduate programs are not rocket science: the students are loaded with tuition and fees that they and their parents cannot afford, so they take jobs, working 20 to 40 hours per week. That does not make for a graduate school-bound GPA. So they are sidelined. Besides, when they graduate, tired and demoralized, they are hardly in a position or mood to take on more loans, as they have to start paying off undergraduate loans.
The solution is not to build buildings at taxpayer expense, only to have them filled with H1 visa cheap engineers to increase the already bloated CEO salaries and profits to the investors. What is needed is for the state, county and city to insist on enrolling Wisconsin kids in graduate programs. Once there, they will surely rise to the challenge of the graduate program demands.
Besides, the Wisconsin students have superior communication skills compared with many foreign students, whose English is often so poor as to render them unintelligible. But the Wisconsin students need funding, fellowships and not deceptive talk about economic stimulus masquerading for H1 visas hires.
It is obvious that building a complex where UWM is will have a substantial positive impact on the economy of the City of Milwaukee. It can help the depressed area west of Oakland near the current engineering building.
Not even McDonald’s could survive there. This area can be revitalized with such a complex, with businesses and apartments/condominiums being developed to match the growing science/engineering activities.
It is appalling that the leadership of the city seems to be looking the other way while a major employer is proposing to leave the city.
Professor George Davida is the director of the Center for Cryptography, Computer and Network Security in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
