| | The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an important<ref>Academically ranked among the top fifty U. S. universities, and among the ten best public universities by [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/t1natudoc_brief.php U. S. News and World Report]</ref> public research university with an enrollment of over forty thousand students and a budget of over two billion dollars. It is located in the state capital, [[Madison, Wisconsin]], on a sprawling lakeside campus. | | The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an important<ref>Academically ranked among the top fifty U. S. universities, and among the ten best public universities by [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/t1natudoc_brief.php U. S. News and World Report]</ref> public research university with an enrollment of over forty thousand students and a budget of over two billion dollars. It is located in the state capital, [[Madison, Wisconsin]], on a sprawling lakeside campus. |
| − | Campus ethnic diversity at UW-Madison is among the lowest in the Big Ten<ref>In the Big Ten schools, the U. S. News' [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_campdiv_brief.php Campus Ethnic Diversity Index] ranges from 0.47 (Northwestern) down to 0.17 (Iowa), with UW-Madison third from the bottom at 0.22</ref>, with the student composition comprising only 5.2% Asian-Americans, 3% Hispanics, 2.7% African Americans and 0.6% Native Americans. An ten-year plan to increase diversity, begun in 1998,<ref>[http://www.uwsa.edu/oadd/plan/ Plan 2008: Educational Quality Through Racial and Ethnic Diversity</ref> was judged in 2006 to have failed.<ref name=plan>[http://www.dailycardinal.com/news/campus-diversity-efforts-failing,-plan-2008-panelists-say.html Campus diversity efforts failing, Plan 2008 panelists say], Daily Cardinal, May 1, 2006</ref> The university caps out-of-state enrollment at 25% and draws most of its students from mostly-white Wisconsin and Minnesota, but the university's chancellor said that the cause of the problem was that minority students graduate at rates far lower than other students. and that “Those differences are not attributable to ability or preparation or background or anything other than the difficulty of being a student of color on our campus."<ref name=plan/> | + | Campus ethnic diversity at UW-Madison is among the lowest in the Big Ten<ref>In the Big Ten schools, the U. S. News' [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/brief/natudoc_campdiv_brief.php Campus Ethnic Diversity Index] ranges from 0.47 (Northwestern) down to 0.17 (Iowa), with UW-Madison third from the bottom at 0.22</ref>, with the student composition comprising only 3% Hispanics, 2.7% African Americans and 0.6% Native Americans. An ten-year plan to increase diversity, begun in 1998,<ref>[http://www.uwsa.edu/oadd/plan/ Plan 2008: Educational Quality Through Racial and Ethnic Diversity</ref> was judged in 2006 to have failed.<ref name=plan>[http://www.dailycardinal.com/news/campus-diversity-efforts-failing,-plan-2008-panelists-say.html Campus diversity efforts failing, Plan 2008 panelists say], Daily Cardinal, May 1, 2006</ref> The university caps out-of-state enrollment at 25% and draws most of its students from mostly-white Wisconsin and Minnesota, but the university's chancellor said that the cause of the problem was that minority students graduate at rates far lower than other students and claimed that “[t]hose differences are not attributable to ability or preparation or background or anything other than the difficulty of being a student of color on our campus."<ref name=plan/> But UW-Madison's history is not any better: in 1940, [[Milton Friedman]] left his teaching job there "[a]fter an ugly display of ... anti-Semitism."<ref>David Warsh, ''Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations'' p. 133 (2007)</ref> |
| | [[Aldo Leopold]] wrote his classic 1949 work, ''A Sand County Almanac,'' while a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin.<ref>[http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/700-799/nb701.htm Biography of Aldo Leopold] - He | | [[Aldo Leopold]] wrote his classic 1949 work, ''A Sand County Almanac,'' while a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin.<ref>[http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/700-799/nb701.htm Biography of Aldo Leopold] - He |