The university president, a former governor and businessman, is set to leave the school much improved from when he found it.
The university president, a former governor and businessman, is set to leave the school much improved from when he found it.
I n 2012, Mitch Daniels, then serving as governor of Indiana, was already a very accomplished man. The former businessman had worked in the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and his gubernatorial administration passed a right-to-work law and balanced the state’s budget.
There was speculation that he would want to become president, and he did — just not of the country. With six months left of his term as governor, he was selected as Purdue University’s next president. Now, with a ten-year record of success in higher education, he has announced that he will step down at the end of the year. In a recent interview with National Review, he reflected on his accomplishments in that office — perhaps chief among them Purdue’s renowned affordability.
While tuition and fees have skyrocketed at most American universities, in-state students attending Purdue have paid $9,992 per year in tuition for the past eleven years, and its room-and-board rate is the lowest in the Big Ten Conference. The question other university presidents competing for students might — or should — be asking is, how did Daniels do it?
“Instead of starting with the question — as too much of higher ed seems to — ‘How much would we like to spend next year?’ and dialing up tuition to produce that amount, we started with the question, ‘What would it take to keep our student’s costs where they are?’” Daniels explained.
He added that spending more time in business than in government helped him learn “how to be cautious with other people’s money.” Another lesson he learned was that it was essential to “get a large, complex organization of people enthusiastic about a common goal,” such as a tuition freeze.
Additionally, he focused on getting down to his institution’s core functions. Purdue is a midwestern land-grant university, and its main purposes are teaching, research, and engagement. “If you’re not doing that, what are you doing? And why?” Daniels said.
Also on Daniels’s résumé is Purdue’s culture of free speech. When he took office, the school had the lowest rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. In FIRE’s most recent rankings, Purdue sits at sixth in the country, and the highest in the Big Ten.
The most important step he took toward that accomplishment was adopting the “Chicago Principles.” In 2014, University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer commissioned a Committee on Freedom of Expression to outline the school’s commitment to First Amendment principles.
The next year, the committee returned the Chicago Principles, which declared that “the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” Its report also prohibited students from disrupting unpopular speakers. Daniels took note of the report and immediately adopted the principles for Purdue.
“I said to people here, ‘You know, we could commission a committee of our own. They could spend three years, and it wouldn’t be any better than this,’ so I called . . . Robert Zimmer and said, ‘Would you mind if another school Xeroxed your principles?’ And he said they’d be flattered. So we did,” Daniels said.
Daniels adhered to the principles of free speech throughout his tenure. In December, a Chinese student at Purdue praised the students killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre committed by the Chinese Communist Party. Other Chinese students at his school attempted to intimidate him into silence and reported his family to the Chinese government. When Daniels learned about the incident, he sent a message to the campus community defending the freedom-loving student and vowing to punish those who reported him. In that message, he wrote:
Joining the Purdue community requires acceptance of its rules and values, and no value is more central to our institution or to higher education generally than the freedom of inquiry and expression. Those seeking to deny those rights to others, let alone to collude with foreign governments in repressing them, will need to pursue their education elsewhere.
Another pillar of his commitment to free speech is his own conduct. Though he writes a regular column in the Washington Post, he makes a habit of choosing not to comment specifically on political matters, such as elections and political parties.
“Out of respect for this public university that I serve, I’ve taken a vow of political celibacy during my time of service,” he told NR, adding that “I stopped talking, or certainly taking any part in, and even commenting on any partisan activities. The day I took this job, I still had six months to go in elected office at the time.”
Like his actions in support of free speech, Daniels set himself apart in handling the Covid-19 pandemic. While other schools moved entirely or predominantly online, Daniels made the 2020–21 school year much more normal than his counterparts did, keeping students in class throughout the year with masks and social distancing.
“We didn’t mandate,” Daniels said. “We didn’t lock down. But on a voluntary basis, our whole community, most notably the students, stepped up to their responsibility to practice careful health habits themselves and to encourage others to do so.”
Daniels bucked another national trend in the fall 2021 semester, refraining from requiring vaccines for all students, while still seeing vaccination rates comparable with those at schools that did have mandates. Purdue had an 80 percent vaccination rate in September, which grew to almost 90 percent by January. Daniels did require masks throughout the year and made unvaccinated students undergo surveillance testing.
What comes next for Daniels? We don’t know for sure. There’s been some speculation that he would return to public office, with some of his advisers saying he is warm to the idea, but he has been coy about his future ambitions.
“People asked in the last few days. I had to laugh and say that apparently some people were thinking and talking about it, but I’m not one of them,” he said. “So now I’ve got six-plus months to go here in the job I just described with its characteristics and limitations. I’m going to keep my mind on those things every day of those six months.”
Wherever Daniels chooses to go next, that institution or workplace will welcome a man of many accomplishments. One of the keys to his success is his affinity for the people he serves. Daniels loves the students at Purdue, who, he says, inspire him.
“If one wants to be optimistic about the nation’s future, spending time with the kind of young people I have spent ten years with will do it for you. They are purposeful. They are sincere. They’re caring,” he said. “It’s from that that I draw my greatest source of optimism about the years ahead.”