Around the country, legislatures are intensely debating funding for public higher education. For #faculty, #staff, #administrators and #boards, It’s important to understand the nuance of public higher education funding, which I have been studying for the past year. Here goes… More and more, states are transitioning from their historical approaches, to models that prioritize ROI and workforce alignment. Driving this narrative, some states argue that they have invested a great

This came up in my LinkedIn feed. https://walterwendler.com/2026/03/ideas-not-ideology-a-line-universities-cannot-afford-to-blur/ I wanted to respond on LI, but it was way too long. So here it is. To start, the author is clearly a long-time academic leader, and only those who have sat in the seat understand how hard it is. He has clear and firm convictions, and nothing I say here is meant to offend the author or attack his positions and values in an ad hominem manner. Also, t

Almost every state has a workforce council or governance body that is meant to oversee workforce development for the state, and ultimately reports to the Governor. That said, there is great divergence in how these councils—and these systems and operations—function state to state. To be frank, when talking to people, we understand that there is no perfect system. It is hard work to communicate, coordinate, and ultimately execute across multiple units and agencies across states