Posted on 08/01/2022 8:47:15 AM PDT by karpov
University presidents make a difference. The best of them can steer a university to new heights of greatness, while the worst of them can bring costly mediocrity or even extinction.
A few weeks ago, Mitch Daniels of Purdue, arguably the primus inter pares of American university presidents, announced that he was stepping down at the end of 2022 after a decade of extraordinary service.
Usually when a president announces his pending resignation, the governing board takes a few months to appoint a huge search committee and hires a firm specializing in placing prospective leaders. This leads to a year or so of intense speculation and a lame duck period in which the existing president waits out the end of his or her term doing little more than routine housekeeping while the university drifts.
Not Purdue: It announced the name of the new president the same day it announced President Daniels’s resignation, a maneuver that struck me as a typically bold, innovative, and constructive move, no doubt at least partly orchestrated by Daniels himself.
The incoming president, Mung Chiang, has been executive vice president at Purdue and the engineering dean for several years. He seems to have had an extraordinary career as a Stanford-educated, top-flight engineer, an entrepreneur (once New Jersey CEO of the year!), and a college professor, coming to Purdue from Princeton, coincidentally Mitch Daniels’s alma mater.
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President Daniels is probably best known for freezing the tuition fees of Purdue for 11 years, through the next academic year. Since the Consumer Price Index over the same period will have risen far more than 20 percent, in an inflation-adjusted sense Mitch (which is what everyone calls him) has probably presided over the sharpest prolonged real reduction in major American university tuition fees in modern American history.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
One of the greats. I still wish Mitch had run for President. I understand his reasons for not doing so (spousal veto), but He was probably our best bet to beat Obama at the time. Mitch is considerably brighter than Obama. He is infinitely more informed. He had a record of real achievement in public office, as opposed to Obama’s completely lackluster, backbench experience. And Mitch has a quick, dry sense of humor, and know how to use it. He could have ridiculed Obama in a sophisticated, understated kind of way — and as we all know, nothing is more lethal to pretentious, smug, arrogant knownothings than ridicule. One of our great missed opportunities.
But for now, thanks and happy trails to you.
George Will’s pick. He mighta been right. When government does it’s job no one notices.I t leaves the attention opening to the naysayers who do not directly address the issues-they can’t.
Both of my older kids — boy and girl — went together to Purdue during Mitch’s tenure. They both graduated together on the same day. Both now have wonderful careers ahead of them, our son designing rockets for the Mars mission and our daughter as a biomedical engineer at a top medical device firm.
I credit Daniels for helping them along their path.
Well done Mitch!
I remember Mitch Daniels, back when he was being talked about as a presidential candidate. In a different era, where voters were more serious about managing the country, Mitch may have become more popular. As is, the average voter is often more impressed by charisma, moxy and which ‘tribe’ they belong to, moreso than the candidates’ grasp of the issues.
If he had run for President, the US would most certainly be in a better place than we are currently.
Perdue has certainly benefited from the great leadership of Mitch Daniels.
In 2020 when everything was on lockdown, Mitch allowed the annual Boiler Business Bash to take place - it is a golf tournament and luncheon attended by 100’s of Purdue Boosters.
The place was packed and no one was wearing a mask - that is when I knew Mitch Daniels was a great guy and leader of Purdue University.
Impressive thread. I kept waiting for someone to chime in that Mitch is a RINO because of some ideologically impure thing he did 15 years ago. But anyone who froze tuition for 10 years certainly gets my admiration.
He wouldn’t have won in 2012. He was another Romney.
Apparently you’re not actually that familiar with the man or his character.
Well, I picked Trump for his positions on immigration and trade after reading his white papers. But I also knew it would take a brawler to get any progress in those areas.
He reminds me of Calvin Cooldidge.
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