University of Wisconsin

A pioneer institution of higher education in the area of public service and adult education through its extension services. Now made up of 26 campuses, with a total enrollment of about 160,000, the university�s origins go back to 1849 and the founding of the tiny College of Wisconsin, in Madison. Later a land-grant institution, the university was swept up in the fervor of progressive political and economic reform that gripped the state in the 1890s. Several years of poor crops and dust storms had devastated American agriculture and helped plunge the nation into a financial panic. In Wisconsin, public discontent exploded with the discovery of rampant bribery and corruption among the Republican leadership that had controlled the state�s politics since the end of the Civil War. In 1900, Robert M. La Follette was elected governor on a platform of radically progressive reforms, including direct primaries for nominating candidates, establishment of a state civil service and state regulation and equitable taxation of railroads and other corporate entities. Called the �Wisconsin Idea,� it included� government recruitment of expert advisors from the University of Wisconsin, whose equally progressive president, CHARLES R. VAN HISE, was quick to convert the university into a partner of state government in the rebuilding of the state economy and body politic. A former professor of geology, Van Hise had conducted detailed studies of mineralbearing areas of the Lake Superior region as a service to the state. As president of the university he believed the obligation of a public institution of higher education was to use science to improve every aspect of the life of the state�s citizens. He proposed to implement his goal in three ways: through faculty research to expand knowledge and develop as many practical uses as possible for such knowledge; by sending faculty experts to collaborate with government officials in improving agriculture, developing industry and solving social and economic problems and by creating and expanding the university�s extension program to bring knowledge to every citizen. �I shall never be content,� said Van Hise, �until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every family in the state. This is my ideal of the state university.� Van Hise went on to strengthen the university�s research programs and train experts in agriculture, engineering, medicine, law, politics, economics and history to advise state administrators. Dozens of professors served on state regulatory and investigating commissions and helped draft progressive legislation that shaped the �Wisconsin Idea.� Van Hise also expanded the extension division into the most comprehensive, farthest reaching such unit of any� university in the world. If, as educators contend, Charles W. Eliot had made Harvard the archetype of private universities, Van Hise, in his turn, built Wisconsin into the archetype of public universities. Word of his� accomplishments spread through magazine articles and, eventually, through Charles McCarthy�s widely circulated book, The Wisconsin Idea (1912).

Delegations of educators from universities across the United States and from overseas flocked to Madison to study what Van Hise had accomplished and to take back with them what they could. The University of� Wisconsin was hailed as the world�s finest by English educators, and the author Lincoln Steffens declared Van Hise to be �in a class by himself among college presidents.� As president from 1903 to 1918, Van Hise established a model for university- government cooperation that has become a uniquely American concept, with the university retaining academic freedom while working with government to provide the citizenry with the benefits of government-sponsored university research. In addition, he expanded the public service and educative functions of American universities by making university extension and other outreach services an integral part of every public university�s basic functions.

The university today serves as the state�s research center, and more than 160,000 people per year avail themselves of the university�s continuing education programs and distance learning programs. Among the public service facilities on the Madison campus are the Space Science and Engineering Center, the Physical Science Laboratory, a museum of art, an arboretum, agricultural experiment stations and hospitals.

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