The University of Wisconsin—Platteville Baraboo Sauk County, affectionately known as “Boo U,” closed its doors last May, just weeks before the end of the semester. This closure marked the latest in a series of shutdowns of University of Wisconsin branch campuses, with eight out of 13 campuses permanently closed in the past three years.
These two-year transfer colleges, with their focus on the liberal arts, provided an accessible and affordable pathway to higher education, particularly for rural and first-generation college students. The closure of “Boo U” was met with a celebration to pay tribute to the college, attended by members of the first graduating class, who received their associate degrees in the 1970s.
Closure of Rural Campuses
Karen DeSanto, a first-term Wisconsin state legislator, described the celebration as “really a memorial,” where students shared how the college had shaped and changed lives in the community. The demise of Wisconsin’s two-year public colleges is an outlier in the trend of college closures, with most other closures being private institutions.
University of Wisconsin officials cited steep declines in enrollment as the reason for the closure of the campuses. The UW system has seen enrollment drop by more than 10 percent since 2010, with the decline being especially acute at the two-year schools. In its final year, “Boo U” had just 100 students, down from over 500 a decade ago.
The shortage of students is only part of the story, as years of budget cuts and tuition freezes have left the UW system among the worst funded in the nation. A sweeping merger in 2017 made the two-year colleges regional branches of the state’s four-year schools, setting off a competitive scramble for students that pitted the two-year UW schools against bigger, better-resourced institutions.
Dan Kallgren, who spent his career teaching history at UW-Marinette, noted that the writing was “really on the wall” after the merger. Marinette ended in-person instruction in 2024 and limped along for another year offering remote classes, with Kallgren teaching the final course at the school.
Impact on Rural Students
UW officials argue that Wisconsin students still have plenty of options, including 13 four-year schools and 16 technical colleges. However, Kallgren says this argument fails to acknowledge the unique role that liberal arts schools like Marinette played in letting rural students try out college.
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According to research by Nicholas Hillman, proximity to a college is associated with higher levels of postsecondary enrollment. The closure of the branch campuses is likely to exacerbate the trend of declining rural student enrollment, which has already dropped at a rate greater than the overall decrease in college attendance.
Alex Stevens, who grew up in a small town in Michigan, chose to attend UW-Marinette due to its proximity and affordability. He thrived at the school and eventually transferred to UW-Green Bay to pursue a history degree, now teaching history and social studies at a Catholic high school in Marinette.
Stevens’ trajectory is much less likely today, not just because the Marinette campus is gone, but also because Wisconsin has moved away from the liberal arts emphasis that was at the core of the mission of the two-year transfer schools. The winnowing of college options in states like Wisconsin reflects a larger story about institutions that serve low-income and rural students closing or being starved of resources.
Douglas Haynes, a professor of English at UW-Oshkosh, notes that diminishing college access creates another form of brain drain, where young rural Wisconsinites are deprived of opportunities at the front end.
In Marinette, the theater arts program is the only one remaining, thanks to a partnership with UW-Green Bay, private donations, and event ticket sales. Lauryn Albaugh, in charge of the program, is hopeful that it will inspire young people in the community, just as it did when she was growing up in Marinette.
Albaugh attributes her love for the arts to the theater program and notes that its survival feels “very encouraging.” However, she is now one of only two employees left at UW-Marinette, with a maintenance man inspecting the mothballed facilities once a week. The closure of the branch campuses has left a void in the community, with many wondering what will become of the empty buildings and the students who relied on them.
Jennifer C. Berkshire, host of the education podcast “Have You Heard,” notes that the closure of the branch campuses is part of a broader trend of institutions that serve low-income and rural students being closed or starved of resources.
