Estimating the Resource Costs of Minority and Disadvantaged Student Programs

Executive Summary

            This paper presents estimates of the full resource costs of Minority and Disadvantaged Student Programs for UW-Madison and the UW System. It shows that for 2008-09 the total resource costs of M/D programs are almost 60 percent higher than the published expenditure figures for UW-Madison and more than 75 percent higher than the published expenditure figures for the UW System. It provides several alternative estimates of the per student resource costs of these programs. Finally, it cumulates the value of the resources committed to M/D programs during Plan 2008 and in the years subsequent to 2008. These differences occur because the UW System’s Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Report (M/D Report) fails, without explanation, to include the full array of M/D program costs even though it openly acknowledges these omissions.
Based on the full resource costs estimates developed here, these costs range from as little as $1,000 per student to as much as $80,000 per student, depending on which groups of students receive the most benefit from these programs.

The results presented here for 2008-09 provide at best a snapshot view of the resource costs of M/D programs. Additional perspective comes from cumulating the resource costs of M/D programs for UW-Madison and for the UW System during the decade-long Plan 2008, and from estimates of these costs for the duration of Plan 2008 plus the first five years under UW’s new diversity plan called Inclusive Excellence.

The constant-dollar estimates of the resource costs incurred by UW-Madison during Plan 2008 total $280,000,000, and they approximate $500,000,000—half a billion dollars—for the 15-year period beginning in 1998-99 and continuing through 2012-13. Comparable estimates for the UW System are substantially greater, totaling $680,000,000 during Plan 2008 and approximating  $1,150,000,000—more than one billion dollars—for this same 15-year period.

By understating the resource costs of its M/D programs and failing to provide evidence on the success of its M/D programs, the UW System fails to meet its commitments to transparency and accountability, and in the process compromises its institutional integrity.                                           

I. Introduction
What is the dollar value of the resources devoted to Minority and Disadvantaged (M/D) Student Programs at UW-Madison and throughout the UW System? Though university officials regularly extol the educational benefits of greater racial and ethnic diversity, they never mention the resource costs that give rise to these benefits, nor do they say anything about how the costs of these programs measure up against their benefits.

The full resource costs of programs to enhance the recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority students are not made apparent in the UW System’s Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Reports (M/D Reports). The data that appear in Table 1 of the  2008-09 M/D Report indicate that UW-Madison spent $25.2 million on what is labeled “Total Program Funds & Scholarships..” After the various omitted costs are included, the full resource costs of UW-Madison’s M/D programs in 2008-09 rise to an estimated $39.9 million. For the much larger UW System, which includes UW-Madison, the full resource costs rise to an estimated $89.9 million in contrast to the published expenditure total of $50.7 million.[1]

What accounts for these differences? As the annual M/D Report acknowledges, certain resource costs are excluded from the “official” published figures. Among the excluded items are the cost of employee “fringe” benefits, several important types of racially-exclusive and other scholarship/grant programs, as well as expenditures made by student government organizations from their segregated fee income. Why these costs are excluded receives no mention.[2]

Two other excluded items account for using the term “resource costs” rather than “expenditures.” One is the value of tuition remission for students taking part in the UW-Madison PEOPLE program. The other is the estimated value of the time devoted to supervising M/D programs. Though neither is an explicit expenditure that would appear in a typical budget, both of them reflect the value of resources devoted to M/D programs.

Several sources of information are used to produce estimates of the full resource costs of M/D programs. The starting point is the already-mentioned M/D Report, which shows for each UW System campus its M/D expenditures by type of expenditure. Another important source is UW-Madison’s Annual Expenditure Report, which publishes expenditure data for one of the expenditure categories included in the M/D Report, as well as expenditures for two state-funded programs that are not included in the M/D Report.

The most important source of information for this analysis is an internal campus document referred to here as the “M/D Program Spreadsheet.” It shows for each M/D program—listed by major revenue fund source—its wage and salary expenditures and its “other” expenditures. Some additional information comes from UW-Madison and UW System budget documents. Finally, other information comes directly from staff involved in M/D programs, as well as Open Records requests made through the UW-Madison Office for Administrative Legal Services. For reasons explained below, some expenditures and resource costs had to be estimated by the author.

Estimates of the resource costs for the UW System are less accurate than for UW-Madison, because much of the needed data is not aggregated across all UW System campuses. For the benchmark year, 2008-09, the author obtained M/D Program Spreadsheets for every UW System institution. Obtaining comparable data going back to the first year of the UW System’s Plan 2008—its decade-long minority program—was not feasible; this would have required submitting to each UW-System institution numerous Open Records requests for a dozen years of M/D Program Spreadsheets and then aggregating the campus figures to arrive at the UW System totals.[3] In addition, the figures for several resource costs for UW-Madison, and for the UW System, had to be estimated from fragmentary information. In developing these estimates, a conscious effort was made to err on the conservative side so as not to overstate the resource costs.

In the interest of transparency, the title of the UW System’s Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Report should be reexamined. The current title gives the impression that M/D programs serve not only minority students but disadvantaged students as well. Yet the report makes the confusing statement: “Multicultural/ Disadvantaged Programs implemented by the University do not distinguish between minority and disadvantaged students; that is, if a student qualifies for these programs, he or she is eligible for all services required under the statute. Therefore, the University only tracks expenditures within the program parameters established by statute.”[4]

Some clarity emerges from a reading of the footnotes to the Report’s Table 1, reproduced here as Table 1. The term “multicultural” is explained as follows (footnote 2): “The terms “minority,” “people of color,” and “multicultural” are used interchangeably in current practice.” Not mentioned is another term that is often used synonymously, namely “historically underrepresented.” The minority student population is then defined (footnote 3): “With respect to race/ethnic groups, ‘multicultural’ targeted groups in the UW System has referred to students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents of African-American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, or Asian-American, particularly South East Asian heritage.” Yet Southeast Asians can hardly be referred to as members of an “historically underrepresented group.”

The definition of  “disadvantaged” students is fuzzy, as indicated by the following statement  (footnote 3): “Within the University of Wisconsin System, the term ‘disadvantaged’ refers to students who are low-income first generation students, and students who can provide evidence they are from a nontraditional or disadvantaged environment (i.e., educational, economic, social or environmental disadvantages).”  While low-income first generation students can be identified and counted, the same cannot be said about students “from a nontraditional or disadvantaged environment (i.e., educational, economic, social or environmental disadvantages).” How these latter students could be identified is not made clear.

Further confusion results from the text’s use of the term “economically disadvantaged” students, and although various definitions of “economically disadvantaged” students could have been devised, none is presented.[5]

The UW System’s Final Report on Plan 2008: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future  (March 2009), throws some light on the meaning of “disadvantaged.” A clarifying statement on page 4 reads: “Data contained in this report represent primarily the four race/ethnic groups specified by Plan 2008. Data specifically on the economically disadvantaged are not available.” Then the report goes on to say: “However, all Plan 2008 goals and initiatives serve both racial/ethnic groups and the economically disadvantaged.”

The latter statement may be true. However, if there is no way to operationalize the definition of “disadvantaged,” and if there is no definition of “economically disadvantaged,” it becomes impossible to determine their respective numbers and to assess whether or to what extent Plan 2008 programs served “disadvantaged” or “economically disadvantaged” students.

For these reasons, the title of what is now called the Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Report should be changed to more accurately reflect its focus: Targeted Minority Student Annual Report.

II. M/D Resource Costs
To facilitate the analysis that follows, M/D programs are divided into two categories. One is “service” programs that provide non-financial help directly to minority students and minority student organizations; the goal being to assist in the recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority students. At UW-Madison, most of these programs are operated by the various colleges, although in 2010 several of them were transferred to the Provost’s Office and are administered by the Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate. The other category includes “financial aid” programs established to assist in the recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority students by providing racially-exclusive, need-based grants and scholarships.

For UW-Madison, $14.9 million of its reported expenditures is devoted to “service” programs, and $10.3 million is devoted to “financial aid” programs. The breakdown of UW System expenditures shows that $39.1 million goes for “service” programs and $11.7 million for “financial aid” programs.[6] The published M/D expenditure data are rearranged in Table 1 so as to reflect these two useful expenditure categories.

A. M/D ‘Service’ Program Resource Costs.

Estimating the omitted expenditure and resource costs figures for “service” programs differs from one program category to another. Fringe benefits are estimated by applying to the salary expenditure figures obtained from the M/D Program Spreadsheets the ratio of fringe benefit costs to salary expenditures for the various funds that support particular programs and then aggregating the results. The excluded fringe benefits in 2008-09 are estimated at $2.6 million for UW-Madison and $7.2 million for the UW System. Segregated fee funds allocated to M/D programs by the student government organizations can be found in their Segregated Fee Spreadsheets. For UW-Madison, segregated fee support for M/D programs comes to $0.6 million, compared to an assumed total of $2.0 million for the UW System.[7]

Estimating the value of supervisory time costs posed an even greater difficulty. After attempting several approaches,[8] a decision was made to use the UW System’s estimate of its administrative costs—six percent—to represent the percentage of total M/D resource costs, including both “service” and “financial aid” programs, devoted to supervisory activity.[9] This results in an estimate of $2.3 million for UW-Madison and $5.1 million for the UW System.[10]

These additions, shown in Table 2, Lines 1b through 1e, push the resource costs of “service” programs from $14.9 million to $20.3 million for UW-Madison and from $39.1 million to $56.2 million for the UW System.

B. M/D Financial Aid Program Resource Costs.

Including the omitted financial aid resource costs proved to be relatively simple for several large expenditure programs, such as the Lawton grants and AOP scholarships, but more complicated for several smaller programs.

Information on expenditures for the Ben R. Lawton Undergraduate Minority Retention Grant (LUMRG) program came directly from the UW-Madison Annual Expenditure Report for Fiscal Year 2009. To be eligible for these need-based grants, students must be sophomores, juniors, or seniors from Wisconsin or Minnesota Reciprocity students; they must be American citizens or permanent residents; and most important, they must be African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, or statutorily defined Southeast Asian American students. For the UW System, 3,505 undergraduates received these grants, which averaged $1,776 per student. Total LUMRG expenditures came to $1.4 million for UW-Madison and $6.2 million for the entire UW System.[11]

The AOP (Advanced Opportunity Program) is a scholarship program slanted toward minorities but does not exclude nonminorities.[12] The principal eligibility criterion, in addition to being United States citizens or Permanent Residents, is membership in one of the following racial/ethnic groups, namely African American or Black, American Indians or Alaskan Native, Hispanic/Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, or Hmong, or Native
Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.[13]

For the UW System, 641 students received AOP grants, 530 of which were identified as minorities. While the average grant totaled  $9,452, grants for African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, and American Indians ranged between $10,100 and $11,100; those for Whites and Other Asian Americans approximated $6,400 and $5,000 respectively. Total AOP expenditures came to $1.2 million for UW-Madison and $7.8 million for the entire UW System.

Thus, these two omitted financial aid programs add significant dollar amounts to both the UW-Madison and UW System totals. They total $5.9 million for UW-Madison ($1.2 million for LUMRG and $ 4.7 million for AOP) and $14.0 million for the UW System ($6.2 for LUMRG and $7.8 million for AOP).

Expenditures for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s (WDPI) Pre-College Scholarship program—known through 2004 as the Pre-College Minority Scholarship program—for UW-Madison and the UW System were supplied by WDPI. Footnote (b) to the UW System’s Table 1 says that precollege scholarships are included. Whether this includes WDPI scholarships is not clear. Complicating matters is the 2004 ruling by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). It ruled that this program violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because these scholarships were restricted to minority students.[14]  WDPI was required to rename the program the Pre-College Scholarship program, open the program to all applicants without reference to race/ethnicity/national origin of applicants, and use some other criterion to determine scholarship eligibility; the one chosen was school lunch participation, which is income-based. What I discovered subsequently is that the enrollment at UW-Madison of these scholarship recipients in the summer pre-college courses listed by WDPI for this program was restricted to minority students. WDPI scholarships used at UW-Madison numbered 324, paying an average of $463, for a total expenditure of $149,940. For the UW System, there were 3,293 scholarships that averaged $511 each, for a total expenditure of $1,681,825. Since it is not clear from the UW-Madison M/D Program Spreadsheet whether it includes the WDPI programs, the expenditures for this program must be added along with the other omitted expenditures.

Expenditures for the Talent Incentive Program grants provided by the Wisconsin Higher Education Aids Board (HEAB) were obtained from HEAB. Until 2010, eligibility for these grants based on financial need standards included membership in a minority group: African American, Hispanic, American Indian, or an individual who was admitted or whose ancestor was admitted to the U.S. from Laos, Vietnam, or Cambodia.  TIP grants were based on financial need standards and a non-traditional student status requirement.[15] This is another scholarship program that came under scrutiny of the U. S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). It ruled in 2010 that HEAB had to eliminate race and national origin from among those considerations determining eligibility for awarding TIP grants.[16]

In 2008-09, 255 UW-Madison students received TIP grants that averaged $1,311 for a total of $334,306. UW System students received 2,418 grants that averaged $1,273 for a total of $3,077,153. Based on a breakdown of student awards by race/ethnicity for 2007-08, more than 50 percent of the recipients were minority students. Because of the eligibility criterion, expenditures for this program must be added.

Curious about the Institutional Scholarship entries in the published  M/D Report, I obtained through an Open Records Request what can be called the UW-Madison M/D Scholarship Program Spreadsheet. It contains data on four categories of scholarships administered by UW-Madison: Law School Scholarships, All other School/College Scholarships, Alumni Club Scholarships, and All Other Institutional Scholarships (excl. Athletics). The exclusion of athletic scholarships in this M/D Scholarship Program Spreadsheet caught my attention. Unable to find any direct information on these “athletic” scholarships, I obtained the UW-Madison Athletic Scholarship Spreadsheet through an Open Records Request. It lists the types and amounts of financial aid (grants, tuition, room and board) awarded to individual athletes who are identified by their race/ethnicity; names of recipients were redacted. The list reveals that approximately 230 targeted minority student athletes, almost 90 percent of them African Americans, received “academic tender” financial aid awards that totaled $2.1 million. If we assume that half the minority athletes receive financial aid based on their minority status, then approximately $1.0 million can be viewed as representing the M/D component of Institutional Scholarships-Athletic.

As for the UW System, I made what is at best a rough estimate based in part on a UW-Milwaukee Athletic Department Financial Aid Spreadsheet and the assumption that the other institutions were able to offer relatively few scholarships/grants. To err on the low side, I used a figure of $3.0 million for UW System athletic scholarships, essentially tripling the UW-Madison figure.

Based on a PEOPLE Program spreadsheet, tuition remission for students in the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program amounted to $2.0 million. This is not an expenditure but does represent a resource cost, i.e., the loss of $2.0 million in tuition revenue for UW-Madison. Since this program operates only at UW-Madison, the UW System cost is also $2.0 million.

The end result of this detective work, shown in Table 2, Lines 2b through 2g, almost doubles the resource costs of M/D “financial aid” programs for UW-Madison, raising the total from $10.3 million to $19.5 million; for the UW System, its total rises from $11.7 million to $33.8 million.

As a result of including these items omitted from the M/D Report, the total resource costs of UW-Madison’s M/D programs rise from $25.2 million to $39.9 million. For the UW System they rise from $50.8 million to $89.9 million.

M/D Reports typically compare M/D expenditures with the total UW System budget. When the full resource costs of $89.9 million for the UW System M/D programs are compared to the entire UW System budget, M/D resource costs constituted 1.9 percent of the “UW System 2008-09 Operating Budget, All Funds” total of $4.73 billion.[17] By contrast, the M/D Report for 2008-09 shows that  “Total M/D Program Funds” and “Institutional Scholarships” of $50.7 constituted less than 0.8 percent of the overall budget, less than half of what is reported here.

IV. Implications
Another perspective on the 2008-09 resource costs of UW-Madison’s M/D programs can
be gained by expressing these estimates on a per student basis.[18] There are several possibilities for doing this, and they depend on how the relevant student population is defined by student level and minority status.

—If the educational benefits of M/D programs in 2008-09 are viewed as accruing to the UW-Madison’s entire student body of 42,000, the resource costs of its M/D programs ($40 million) approximate $1,000 per student. This cost calculation is based on the frequent assertion by campus administrators that the benefits of M/D programs accrue to all students.

—If, instead, these benefits are viewed as accruing principally to UW-Madison’s 4,600 undergraduate and graduate minority students, including Asian Americans, the resource costs of its M/D programs approximate $9,000 per minority student. This calculation can be viewed as assuming that AOP funding for graduate students is part of an effort to raise the academic aspirations of minority undergraduates.

—If, on the other hand, these benefits are seen as accruing primarily to UW-Madison’s 2,100 targeted minority undergraduate students (African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics), the per-student resource costs of its M/D programs rises to approximately $20,000.

—If the benefits are viewed as accruing even more narrowly to the estimated 500 targeted minority undergraduate students who would not have been admitted if their admission had been based on the same academic standard applied to non-targeted applicants,[19] the average annual resource costs to assist this relatively small group of students rises to approximately $80,000 per student.[20]

The most dramatic result is the high resource cost, $80,000 per student, to increase the representation of targeted minority undergraduate students beyond the number that would be admitted in the absence of UW-Madison’s preferential admission policy for targeted minority applicants.

Still another perspective results when similar comparisons are made not for the UW System but rather for the Rest of the UW System, that is, excluding UW-Madison.[21] This is done by subtracting UW-Madison enrollments and resource costs from the UW System totals.[22]

—If in 2008-09 the educational benefits of the Rest of the System’s M/D programs which involved resource costs of $45.6 million ($86.3 million for the UW System less $40.7 million for UW-Madison), accrue to the Rest of the System’s 131,000 students (173,000 System students less the 42,000 UW-Madison students), the per student resource costs drops to approximately $340.

—If the educational benefits of these programs accrue to the Rest of the System’s 17,000 minority students, the per student resource costs rises to approximately $2,700.

—If the benefits of M/D programs in the Rest of the System are viewed as accruing primarily to its approximately 13,300 targeted minority undergraduate students (African American, Native American, Hispanic, and Southeast Asian), the per student resource costs rises to $3,400 per targeted minority undergraduate.[23]

These comparisons show that the per student resource costs of M/D programs in the Rest of the UW System fall well short of those for UW-Madison.[24] Two interpretations of the data can be imagined. First, the UW System might encourage more targeted minority students to enroll at other UW System campuses rather than at UW-Madison, because the per student resource costs of their M/D programs are so much lower. Second, the UW System might encourage targeted minority students currently enrolled in the rest of the System to transfer to UW-Madison where they can take advantage of the greater resources made available through its M/D programs.

Neither of these interpretations seems plausible. The first, because some targeted minority students hoping to enroll at UW-Madison would want to attend what they view as the “best” quality institution open to them, which in this case means UW-Madison. To them the institution’s regard for the relative cost of M/D programs would be irrelevant. The second, because considerable numbers of targeted minority students enrolled at other UW System campuses would probably not be admissible at UW-Madison, and even if admitted, they might not be able to afford the higher cost of attending UW-Madison.

V. On the Benefits of M/D Programs
How do we make sense of these results? Most important, we need to know something about who benefits from M/D programs. Campus leaders repeatedly assert that the benefits of these programs accrue to all students. Defenders of M/D programs speak as if the benefits of these programs accrue largely if not exclusively to targeted minority undergraduate students. How non-targeted students view the benefits of M/D programs is not clear; opinions probably range widely among different student groups.

The assumption that all students benefit from M/D programs is difficult to support. There is little or no solid evidence about the nature and magnitude of the educational benefits of either UW-Madison or UW System M/D programs, because few if any of these programs have been carefully evaluated. Nor is there any solid information about how widely these educational benefits, whatever they may be, are shared among members of the student body, particularly among targeted minority undergraduate students.

About all that can be said is that minority students and their supporters are keen on maintaining—if not expanding—M/D programs. Non-minority students who support M/D programs can be viewed as quite willing to have their $1000 share of the overall cost of programs go to assist targeted minority students. By contrast, non-minority students who are unsympathetic to M/D programs can think of this $1000 figure per student cost of these programs as a form of “tax” that diverts valuable resources to the pursuit of programs that benefit a relatively small part of the student population. These non-minority students may also be more likely to view the existence of M/D programs as a direct result of UW-Madison’s preferential admissions policy.

What we lack is information about the benefits of M/D programs—what kinds of benefits they produce and to whom these benefits accrue. Without information on the benefits of these M/D programs, it becomes impossible to contrast in any meaningful way the benefits of these M/D programs with their resource costs. Until that information becomes available, all we know is that the per student resource costs of these programs are substantial. It is unfortunate that the UW System and UW-Madison have given so little attention to this important question.

VII. Cumulative M/D Resource Costs
Knowing the value of the resources devoted to M/D programs in 2008-09 provides a useful snapshot of M/D program resource allocation. But another set of numbers is also of interest, namely the cumulated resource costs of M/D programs during the UW System’s Plan 2008—which operated from 1998-99 through 2007-08—and in the years beyond Plan 2008. This leads to two questions: What are the cumulative resource costs of M/D programs during the decade-long Plan 2008? Inasmuch as the resource cost estimate for 2008-09 is available from this analysis, and this cost can be estimated for 2009-10, we can also ask what is the dollar value of the resources allocated to M/D programs over the twelve-year period, 1998-99 through 2009-10?

To produce estimates of the cumulative resource costs of M/D programs requires repeating for each year the process used to construct the 2008-09 estimates.[25] The result is a time series of annual resource cost data for 1998-99 through the current academic year( 2012-13).[26] After these estimated annual M/D resource cost totals are assembled, they must be adjusted for changes in price levels. This can be done for Plan 2008 by expressing the annual totals in constant 2009 dollars. The cumulated estimates over 1998-99 through 2007-008 indicate the total resource commitment made in support of Plan 2008 as seen at end of that effort.

To view the total resource costs incurred during the ten years of Plan 2008 plus the five years since then (2008-09 through 2012-13, which represent the new diversity plan called Inclusive Excellence), annual estimates for this fifteen year span must be expressed in constant 2012 dollars and then cumulated.

The time series data underpinning this process were constructed in the following fashion. The figures on Program Expenditures and Institutional Scholarships, similar to those shown in Lines 1a and 2a in Table 2, come from the published M/D Reports. Fringe benefit costs are estimated from annual M/D Spreadsheets obtained from the UW System. Segregated Fee Income allocated for M/D programs was obtained from Segregated Fee Spreadsheets and had to be interpolated for individual years because of missing data. Supervisory Costs are based on the six percent figure applied to all M/D resource costs. Annual Expenditure Reports provide data on AOP and LUMRG scholarships/grants. Data on WDPI and HEAB programs come from those two agencies. Institutional Scholarships-Athletic were estimated by linking the 2008-09 figure described earlier to scholarship data reported in the UW-Madison Athletic Board’s annual reports to the Faculty Senate.[27] Tuition remission figures came from PEOPLE Program Spreadsheets. Producing these estimates was complicated by the inability of both UW-Madison and UW System officials to locate UW-Madison M/D Spreadsheets for 2001-02, 2003-04, and 2004-05; interpolations had to be made for the missing data.

Producing comparable estimates for the UW System proved to be more difficult because the UW System does not aggregate the campus level data except as they appear in the M/D Reports. M/D Program Expenditures and Institutional Scholarships come from the same source noted above for UW-Madison data. To estimate fringe benefits, annual salary totals were obtained by assuming for each year that the relationship between salaries and total expenditures in the UW System equaled that at UW-Madison,[28] and that fringe benefits as a percentage of salaries equaled that for the same Fund numbers in the UW System. Segregated Fee Expenditures for M/D programs were available from Segregated Fee Income Spreadsheets for some years and had to be estimated for other years. To estimate the value of supervisory costs, the same six percent figure was applied to the total resource cost figures. Data on the AOP and LUMRG state-funded financial aid programs were obtained from the UW System Budget. Data for WDPI and HEAB came from those agencies. The omitted Institutional Scholarship data was estimated by projecting the 2008-09 dollar total backwards in proportion to UW-Madison scholarship figures from the Annual Report of the Athletic Board.[29] Every effort was made to produce conservative totals when exact data were not available. At the same time, it should be noted that the resulting estimates for the UW System are probably less accurate that those for UW-Madison. Figures for 2008-09 were used for data not available in 2009-10.

The results of this exercise are shown in Table 3, which cumulates the annual resource costs figures for both UW-Madison and the UW System. During the 10-year Plan 2008 period, UW-Madison’s estimated resource costs for its M/D programs, valued in constant 2009 dollars, cumulate to $280,000,000. With the addition of estimates for 2008-09 through 2012-13, UW-Madison’s M/D resource costs expressed in constant 2012 dollars cumulate to almost $500,000,000. In short, the estimated resource costs for UW-Madison’s M/D programs over this fifteen-year period totaled approximately one-half billion dollars.

For the UW System, the comparable constant dollar resource costs for its M/D programs cumulate to $680,000,000 (in 2009 dollars) during the decade-long Plan 2008. With the addition of the years 2008-09 through 2012-13, the estimated resource costs cumulate to $1,150,000,000 (in constant 2012 dollars), or more than a billion dollars.

The magnitude of these resource costs lead to further questions: Might these resources have been spent in different, but more effective, ways to assist in the recruitment, retention, and graduation of targeted minority students? Might these resources have been spent differently in promoting the larger goal of enhancing racial/ethnic diversity through existing campus M/D programs? Or might these resources have been more productively allocated to further other aspects of the strategic plans of both UW-Madison and the UW System?

VII. Conclusions
The UW System’s Minority and Disadvantaged Student Annual Report for 2008-09 understates the resource costs of M/D programs at UW-Madison and throughout the UW System. This understatement of M/D resource costs has persisted for many years and continues in the most recent M/D Report. When the omitted expenditures and resource costs are taken into account, the total resource costs of M/D programs in 2008-09 rise from the reported total of $25 million to almost $40 million for UW-Madison and from $51 million to almost $90 million for the UW System.

Another perspective emerges when the full resource costs of M/D programs are expressed on a per-student basis. At UW-Madison the costs range from approximately $1,000 for the average student to as much as $80,000 for each targeted minority undergraduate student who was admitted under the “holistic” admission, meaning the student was not subject to the same academically competitive standard applied to non-targeted students.

Yet another indication of the resources devoted to M/D programs emerges when the resource costs of these programs, expressed in constant 2012 dollars, are accumulated over the duration of Plan 2008. The results indicate that UW-Madison devoted more than a quarter of a billion dollars to M/D programs during the decade-long Plan 2008. This total rises to almost a half-billion dollars during the 15-year span from 1998-99 through 2012-13, which embraces Plan 2008, and the beginning of the new UW System diversity program called Inclusive Excellence. The cumulated resource costs of UW System M/D programs expressed in constant 2012 dollars reached two-thirds of a billion dollars during Plan 2008 (1998-89 through 2007-08) and more than one billion dollars when resources costs for the subsequent five years are included.

Why the UW System has never attempted to provide a full accounting of the resources devoted to its M/D programs is perplexing. Doing so is not that difficult a task. UW System Administration could request and organize the campus data far more efficiently than any single individual without direct access to the data. As it is, I have had to estimate certain resource costs because obtaining the detailed data from the various campuses was more than I could do by myself. What these reconstituted data would show is the substantial public investment in M/D programs. Without an accurate fix on the size of these expenditures, it is difficult to assess whether too many or two few resources are being devoted to M/D programs.

Furthermore, insufficient attention has been devoted to identifying and measuring the benefits of M/D programs, as well as how they were distributed among the general student population and the minority student population. What this means is that the countless hundreds of millions of dollars in resources devoted to M/D programs over the past 45 years have yielded little or no firm information that would permit assessing the cost-effectiveness of these programs.

By understating its total M/D expenditure levels, the UW System fails to meet its commitments to transparency and accountability, and in the process it compromises its institutional integrity. Whether decisions about the on-going commitment of resources to M/D programs would have been any different if comprehensive estimates of these resource costs had been available cannot be known. But in the face of tight budgets, the Board of Regents, UW System officials, and UW-Madison campus leaders should be assessing the substantial resource costs of M/D programs, not only against the progress being made in achieving greater racial/ethnic diversity on its UW System campuses but also in comparison with the benefits of diverting these resources to other high priority uses.

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