Some Wisconsin Technical College Programs Have 2-3 Year Waiting Lists

Some technical colleges around Wisconsin are experiencing long waitlist for high demand programs like welding.

This week classes get underway, or already have,  for many college students around the state. At Wisconsin’s 16 technical schools, more than 296,000 students are getting fall coursework underway.

At the same time, higher education institutions face looming questions of how to deal with budget constraints, affordability issues and adapting  to changing job markets.

WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” spoke with Layla Merrifield, the president of the Wisconsin Technical College System.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity

KAK: What financial pressures are the technical colleges facing?

LM: Like most Wisconsin families we’re dealing with the effects of inflation over the last five years. That is creating a number of pressure points on our campuses. We’ve also seen really subpar investments by the state Legislature in the Wisconsin Technical College System over the last 10 years. People always say, aren’t Wisconsin technical colleges partially funded with property taxes? And that is a relatively small portion of our funding but that access has been capped since 2014.

All of that combined has created some pressures and so you start to see around half of our campuses or so, have waiting lists for really high demand, high cost programs, which is unfortunate for our employers as well as our students..

KAK: What areas are experiencing waiting lists? 

LM: It totally depends on the region and the campus. But we’ve seen waiting lists for programs that are essential like welding, as well as things like ultrasound technicians.

All of our (ultrasound technician) programs have two to three year waiting lists across the state and yet that is one area where our hospitals are saying we need more ultrasound techs.

KAK: Do you anticipate cuts to programs or cuts to the workforce?

LM:  We discontinue programs pretty regularly in our system but we prefer to do that when they’re no longer relevant in the marketplace versus having to do it due to budget constraints.

We’ve always offered small programs that are nonetheless essential to local employers. They count on that pipeline and we’re starting to have to trim back on those things.

We continue to do things like sharing programming and trimming our administrators, as well as finding savings on healthcare plans, just anything we can do that doesn’t harm the classroom.

KAK: About 294,000 students are enrolled in technical colleges around Wisconsin, but we have seen enrollment in decline for more than a decade. What are you doing about declining enrollment?

LM: We really try to meet our students where they are. Eighty percent of our students overall are part time, so it’s not really a matter of fewer students accessing the Wisconsin Technical College System, it’s a matter of how many credits can they afford to take at any given time. So our part time students might decline sometimes. But I think it’s largely a function of the barriers that our students are facing and how busy their lives are overall.

KAK: Artificial intelligence is expected to reshape the job industry. Gateway Technical College partnered with Microsoft last year on a data center academy. Do you anticipate more programs like that that will be developed around the state?

LM: AI is sort of all encompassing. We’re training our faculty so that they can relay to our students what’s an ethical approach to using AI, as well as understanding how AI is expected to affect whatever industry they’re going into, whether that’s manufacturing, whether that’s healthcare, whether that’s marketing and business.

Wisconsin technical colleges says some high demand programs have 2-3 year waiting list was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.