| | [[image:Bascomhall.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Bascom Hill, historic center of the university, with Bascom Hall at top; on a commemorative postcard reproduced from an 1879 lithograph]] | | [[image:Bascomhall.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Bascom Hill, historic center of the university, with Bascom Hall at top; on a commemorative postcard reproduced from an 1879 lithograph]] |
| − | 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 one of the most [[liberal]] public research universities in the nation. It has 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.<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> |
| | 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> | | 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> |