With the recent talk of some suburbs (Cedarburg, Germantown, Mequon) who are thinking of seceding from the MATC taxing district, it's obvious that many communities are irritated with the technical college and its management, and more specifically, its costs.
Take Germantown's case.
From the data in the Journal-Sentinel, Germantown has 452 students in the Wisconsin Technical College System, of which, 193 of them are going to MATC. For this, Germantown pays $5.1 million to MATC alone. Before you start talking about where Germantown should pay its WTCS dues, you've gotta look at the numbers in amazement.
$5.1 million for 193 MATC Germantown students breaks down to a whopping $26,400 per student!
You know what Germantown should do? Stop funding MATC and just fund 193
full scholarships to Marquette, where tuition is
$26,200/year. You'd certainly get more bang for your buck that way.
With some simple math, MATC has 13,000 "Full Time Equivalent" students and their budget is $309m, which comes to $23,800 per student. That's just an incredible figure for one year of
technical college education. Maybe they should send them all into the UW-system, who can somehow educate a collegian for the low low price of $14,700 per year. Amazing.
Maybe it's because the
average salary for a full-time MATC professor is a whopping $91,000. -- For comparison, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee full professor gets around $84k, an associate professor $65k, and an assistant professor $57k. -- And of course, professors at UWM are doing other things, like publishing research papers, et cetera. (I told this tid-bit to an old college roommate, who's now a PhD teaching History in the UW system. He was mortified.)
Clearly, the MATC system is out of control. There's no doubt that this is due to unelected board members and scandalous union contract negotiations.
Who can blame Germantown, Cedarburg, or Mequon for wanting out?
