Creating the Future
The Story of MATC
Ever changing in response to changing challenges, Milwaukee Area Technical College is the bridge to a better future for our graduates and their employers. Over the course of our history, through pragmatic teaching and learning, MATC has played a rich and varied part in the growth of greater Milwaukee. We were there when you needed us, we’re here for you now, and we’ll be there for you tomorrow, building an inclusive prosperity.
Founded in 1912, MATC has grown to become one of the Midwest’s largest community-based technical colleges, offering multiple paths to success:
Pre-College Education – Students earn a high school diploma and/or prepare for college-level studies. Immigrant populations gain English-language and occupational skills.
Technical – Students earn an associate degree, diploma or certificate, leading to technical careers in some 200 exciting fields.
Four-Year College Transfer – Students complete the first half of their bachelor’s degree. MATC credits transfer to hundreds of four-year colleges and universities in Wisconsin and beyond.
Outreach – Students acquire basic academic skills in their neighborhoods through partnerships with community-based organizations and K-12 school districts.
Short-Term Training – Incumbent workers receive targeted, skill-specific training. Underemployed and unemployed populations undergo entry-level occupational training, often in bilingual formats.
Whichever path students take at MATC, they share one thing in common. To advance their education, they show tremendous determination and make difficult sacrifices. “They take enormous pride in their academic accomplishments. It is truly inspiring to witness,” says Jim Walsh, MATC provost.
Most full-time students are pursuing degrees and diplomas, but more than half of our students are taking a course or two to expand their skills or learn new ones. We have vast experience with facilitating lifelong learning, which has been a core element of our mission from the start. Occupational faculty members come from industry backgrounds and have extensive professional experience. The average experience level for the most recent group hired was 14 years.
No other two-year college in Wisconsin can rival the scope and complexity of MATC’s mission. With 199 degree, diploma, certificate and apprentice programs, we offer the widest choice of careers.
The college serves about 57,000 students per year, the majority of whom attend part-time. Full-time equivalent enrollment (total credits taught, expressed as full academic loads) is about 13,400.
Increasingly, a First Choice
 Everywhere at MATC, hands-on teaching, smaller class sizes and individual attention enhance the learning experience. Students learn at their own pace, at convenient times and locations, and get the help they need to succeed. While we offer a second chance to those who have struggled, for many we are the college of first choice.
 People choose MATC because they want to be able to hit the ground running as new employees. Ninety percent of graduates surveyed either are employed within six months or have continued on to four-year colleges and universities.
MATC is an open-enrollment institution, meaning we accept all who want to learn. Applicants take a test called the Accuplacer, designed not to weed out, but to determine a person's starting academic level.
Convenient to Attend
For convenience and access, we operate four
campuses, all of which offer night and weekend
classes:
Downtown Milwaukee
700 West State Street
Mequon
5555 West Highland Road
Oak Creek
6665 South Howell Avenue
West Allis
1200 South 71st Street
A pioneer in distance learning, MATC offers five diplomas and six certificates entirely online, plus hundreds of online courses. Registrations in online courses recently surpassed 12,000, accounting for 14 percent of total enrollment. MATC courses also are taught at numerous evening centers and community-based sites.
 For Many, a Starting Point
Once considered strictly a trade school, MATC increasingly has become a stepping stone to a university education. Our junior-college role has expanded dramatically. Almost one-third of incoming students plan to pursue bachelor's degrees. About 500 students per year enter the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from MATC. We maintain more than 360 program-to-program transfer agreements with participating four-year colleges and universities, as well as comprehensive agreements. Transfer options at MATC have tripled since 2000.
Occupational Programs
MATC continues to provide the skills infrastructure that keeps the community running. Among our graduates are chefs, nurses, dental hygienists, arborists, barbers, cosmetologists, electricians, carpenters, machinists, mechanics, masons, plumbers, welders, firefighters, police officers and paramedics, for example.
Some other occupational programs for which we are known include:
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Anesthesia Technology |
Graphic Design |
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Aviation Technology |
Marketing |
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Baking Production |
Photography |
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Cardiovascular Technology |
Surgical Technology |
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Computer Information Technology |
Tool and Die |
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E-Commerce |
TV and Video Production |
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Electronic Engineering Technology |
Web Design |
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Funeral Science |
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Diverse, Multifaceted
MATC is the most diverse college in the state – 44 percent of students identifying ethnicity are minorities. The student body also is the state’s most diverse in terms of age and social background. Workers seeking retraining and college-educated professionals adding skills constitute growing segments. Simultaneously, we serve such a large immigrant population that we have been likened to Milwaukee’s Ellis Island. A large number of students are working parents, many of them single.
The “typical” MATC student defies description, because students come from all walks of life, all cultures, all faiths, all nationalities and all circumstances. The diversity that students encounter at MATC prepares them for life in an ever-more pluralistic American society. MATC students represent a broad cross-section of committed learners.
While nontraditional adult learners remain the backbone of the institution, we are experiencing an influx of traditional college students transitioning directly from high school. Although the average student age is 28, 19-year-olds currently constitute the most populous age band at MATC.
 A Sound Investment
Over time, MATC has pumped billions of dollars into the community, returning $1.83 for every dollar invested.
Adding the indirect benefits – reduced crime, reduced unemployment and stable families – MATC returns more than $9 to the community for every dollar invested.
 The skills added to the workforce by MATC generate increased earnings that are reinvested in the economy. The total added earnings value created by MATC surpasses $333 million per year, most of which stays in the Milwaukee area, because the vast majority of graduates make their lives in southeastern Wisconsin.
Continuous Evolution
The MATC story is one of continuous evolution in response to changing needs. A few recent examples:
Wisconsin is experiencing a severe shortage of registered nurses; we have reallocated resources to open additional sections and are expanding the program regionally.
 Milwaukee’s central city faces epidemic unemployment, especially among African-American males. In partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools, MATC is creating new pathways to college for at-risk students.
A new global, hyper-technical economy threatens manufacturing in southeastern Wisconsin. We provide the skilled workers to make the goods that can compete on the basis of American-built quality.
At the same time, we are working with employers on a national effort to upgrade the skills of production workers. We train the technicians who will build and maintain the next generation of quality-enhancing, automated manufacturing tools.
MATC also is taking a leadership role in digital communications by developing a new applied technology center to support emerging digital products and services. This center will be a partnership between education and business, promoting formation of industry clusters, igniting new technologies and training tomorrow’s communications workers.
Reformist Roots
 MATC owes its beginnings largely to the passion of one man, social reformer Charles McCarthy. Outraged by the rampant child labor of his era, McCarthy in 1911 prodded the State Legislature to pass a law creating a statewide network of continuation schools. Employers for the first time were required to release boys and girls to attend school or learn a vocation. The same right was accorded for the first time to trade apprentices. (Boys were apt to be indentured with as little as a third-grade education.)
 Led by founding director Robert L. Cooley, the Milwaukee Continuation School began classes in the fall of 1912 in rented quarters at the Manufacturers’ Home Building on Mason Street and at the Stroh Building south of the Post Office. These makeshift classrooms soon were bursting at the seams, however, and city leaders authorized construction of a permanent school at the corner of 6th and State Streets. The first section of the Main Building opened in 1920. Its completion and the consolidation of classes were to take eight more years. The new school was called Milwaukee Vocational, to reflect its growing vocational training mission.
From its earliest days, Milwaukee Vocational School offered evening classes taught by industry professionals, using the same equipment students would encounter on the job. Cooley called this “practical learning,” a term that survives. It was predicated on the need to serve a richly diverse audience, comprised of people from many different backgrounds, but who above all wanted learning that would directly advance their lives.
Then as now at MATC, working professionals dominated the ranks of evening faculty. In response to popular demand from various neighborhoods, a system of branch evening schools – today known as evening centers – quickly emerged.
Creation of a Junior College
 The Great Depression saw the development of a high school completion program and a junior college for those who could not afford four years of university education but wanted to get a start. The school’s new director, William Raasche, had a visionary idea: Students would take college transfer courses in the morning and occupational classes in the afternoon. That way, when the economy improved, they would be prepared to enter the job market immediately, while preserving their option to continue learning. The first credit transfer partner was the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
War Years
 World War II transformed Milwaukee Vocational into a training center for defense workers. The Army Signal Corps set up a training unit on campus. The school ran day and night, seven days a week, facilitating the entry of large numbers of women and African Americans into the industrial workforce for the first time. When the war ended, returning servicemen flooded the traditional apprentice programs, but the demand for tradespeople already was declining relative to technicians.
The sudden influx of adult learners led the college to change its name to Milwaukee Vocational and Adult School in 1948.
Milwaukee Institute of Technology
 In the postwar period, technology developed for the military – from radar to computers – rapidly changed the way Americans lived and worked. Answering a demand for a new kind of worker with new sets of skills, Milwaukee Vocational launched a series of technical programs that led to the school’s reinvention as the Milwaukee Institute of Technology in 1951.
MIT was a parallel unit spun off to house two-year associate degree programs. It thus became the direct forerunner of today's MATC. In 1959, MIT gained accreditation as a college.
Dawn of Public TV
 More than any other new technology, television changed the world. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee Tech helped open the new medium to education. Precursor to today’s College of the Air, emanating from a laboratory on the 6th floor of the Main Building, closed-circuit television instruction began in early 1950. Locally and nationally, Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeider led the fight to set aside VHF channels for public television.
In 1952 the Federal Communications Commission licensed Milwaukee Channel 10 to MIT. Five years later, Channel 10 WMVS inaugurated the first educational TV broadcasts in Wisconsin, with teachers hired from Milwaukee Public Schools, teaching MPS courses.
The Modern Era
The 1960s saw rapid changes. In 1964, the Milwaukee Vocational and Adult School added "Technical" to its name. Four years later, it recombined with the Milwaukee Institute of Technology to become the new Milwaukee Technical College.
 Led by Gov. Warren Knowles, the Legislature by this time had decided to replace the small, independent vocational schools with regional colleges that would equalize the funding among all constituent communities and function as centralized authorities.
In 1969, metro Milwaukee’s vocational schools merged into Milwaukee Area Technical College as the 16th member of the new Vocational, Technical and Adult Education System (now the Wisconsin Technical College System), covering all of Milwaukee County, the southern two-thirds of Ozaukee County and portions of Washington County.
The former West Allis Vocational School, remodeled and expanded, became the new West Campus of MATC. Simultaneously, MATC built new regional campuses in Oak Creek and Mequon, which opened in 1976.
Going Digital
 The digital revolution reached throughout the college, from office assistant courses to television production. In 1992, in partnership with Zenith Corp. and AT&T, Channel 10 produced the nation’s first test broadcast of a digital television signal. In March 2000, the station became the first in Wisconsin to begin regular broadcast of digital, high-definition programs.
Sister station WMVS TV, Channel 36, recently launched the state’s first multi-channel, 24-hour, high-definition broadcasts.
MATC entered the wireless digital era in 2003, becoming the first college in Wisconsin to provide wireless Internet service throughout all campuses.
Online learning has skyrocketed and become ever-more sophisticated, fueled by the increasing availability and affordability of high-speed Internet connections.
Hispanic Community Grows
 The rise of a large Hispanic community in Milwaukee over the last 20 years changed teaching across the entire college. Working with its Office of Bilingual Education, MATC launched an array of bilingual courses catering to Hispanics, aimed at workforce development. Among them were bilingual programs in Office Assistant, Nursing Assistant, and, most recently, Phlebotomy.
We also designed condensed Spanish language courses (Command Spanish) specifically for service professionals needing bilingual skills.
Supported by a charitable consortium led by the Gates Foundation, we are partners in Milwaukee’s first two early-college, bilingual high schools, designed to put at-risk Hispanic students on a college track.
Health Programs Boom
 A dramatic rise in the demand for health professionals led to opening a state-of-the-art Health Sciences Building at the Downtown Milwaukee Campus in 1996. The facility is dedicated to teaching the full range of health occupations, using the latest technology.
To alleviate the current statewide nursing shortage, we expanded the program in 2002 and again in 2003, creating our first satellite section at the Mequon Campus, with plans for sections at Oak Creek and West Allis.
MATC now has become one of the state’s foremost providers of entry-level, bedside nurses. Registered nursing is the highest-demand program offered by the college.
Governance and Funding
 As a member of the Wisconsin Technical College System, we are subject to the system’s policies and procedures. The WTCS Board sets annual tuition and fees for MATC and its sister colleges. District boards maintain local control and levy property taxes.
Over time, this tax has become the colleges’ single most important revenue source. It now pays for about 41 percent of MATC’s operating costs and has increased in direct proportion to a decline in state aid over the past decade.
The college has a current budget of $289 million and employs about 2,300 full- and part-time faculty and staff.
Indicative of good financial health, our current bond rating from Moody’s Investors Service is Aa2 with a stable outlook, which is higher than the ratings for Milwaukee County, the City of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin. A 2003 state audit made eight recommendations for operational improvements, while finding that our operating costs per student had been kept below the average for the technical college system.
 The president of MATC and his staff report directly to the MATC District Board, which oversees the college’s operations and finances. The board meets monthly and has nine unpaid volunteer members. They serve three-year terms and are appointed by a committee of the elected school board presidents from within the district, plus four extra members from the Milwaukee School Board.
A complex eligibility formula ensures diversity and a voice for key stakeholders; one advisory, nonvoting seat is designated for the Student Senate. This cost-effective, proven system of governance facilitates professional management, guarantees local accountability and insulates the college from special interests.
Dedicated to student success, responsive to rapidly changing job market needs, committed to efficiency, strengthened by continuous quality improvement, Milwaukee Area Technical College is creating the future now.
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