Chancellor and provost comment on government shutdown

Both the Chancellor Dean Van Galen and Provost David Travis had similar statements regarding the shutdown. “The government shutdown did not have broad or serious impacts on the university, but could certainly have impacted students and employees who have family members or others that are federal employees or contractors,” Van Galen stated. “The govern- ment shutdown would have had a greater impact on major research university such as UW-Madison because a large portion of their revenue is from federal grants and contracts.”

Over email, Provost Travis agreed that families of federal employees may have struggled. “They weren’t receiving pay- checks during a challenging time of year (post-holidays) and when tuition is due, I suspect that added a lot of stress to those families. However, since we are primarily funded by state dollars, student tuition, and student fees, there weren’t any immediate direct impacts.” Travis concluded, stat- ing that if the shutdown had lasted significantly longer, he suspects there would have been some trickle-down effects as some cam- pus programs are funded through federal grants.

Financial Aid also commented on the shutdown, stating that there wasn’t much of an impact on financial aid operations.