Judging from the headlines in recent months, it might seem as if Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. is single-handedly overhauling not only Purdue University, where he is the president, but also the entire higher-education system in the United States.
“Mitch Daniels Reinvents the American University,” wrote the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune on August 15. “Mitch Daniels Battles the Campus Bureaucracy,” crowed a July 28 blog post on Reason.com. “Mitch Daniels, Now University President, Spurs Rethinking on Value of a Degree,” wrote The Wall Street Journal on July 25. The New York Times hasn’t just written about Mr. Daniels; it has advertised him as a key speaker next month at its “Schools for Tomorrow” forum.
The headlines and conference appearances obscure a core truth about Mr. Daniels’s presidency: Far from being a disrupting force, he has doubled down on many of the most traditional aspects of a major research university. Fund raising, sponsored research, and commercialization have all seen above-average increases during Mr. Daniels’s first 18 months as president of the Indiana institution. And several of the measures he has put forth to reform the university, such as a three-year-degree program, have already made it into the mainstream of academe.
Mr. Daniels doesn’t dispute any of that. He has a more modest view of his role and the programs he has developed since becoming president of Purdue, in January 2013, after serving two terms as the Republican governor of Indiana. “I don’t consider that we’ve done anything revolutionary, so far,” Mr. Daniels says.
“Purdue Moves,” the moniker that Mr. Daniels has given his new plans, is built on promoting the institution’s strengths, says Patricia Hart, chair of the University Senate and a professor of Spanish at the main campus, in West Lafayette.
So Mr. Daniels’s real forte might be discussion, not disruption. “President Daniels is an incredibly talented communicator,” Ms. Hart says. “He’s been very good at telling Purdue’s story.”
Business as Usual
While Mr. Daniels’s approach is sometimes far from novel, his focus on efficiency and affordability has followed him from the governor’s mansion to Purdue.
That is apparent from one of his latest, most-discussed ideas: the three-year-degree program, which will be offered this fall for five majors in the Brian Lamb School of Communication.
“In fields of study where they are feasible, three-year degrees may become a new norm in higher education,” Mr. Daniels said in a news release.
The accelerated degree program came with a half-million-dollar prize for the school and is one of several measures at Purdue meant to create a more affordable path to completion. The money comes from the president’s “discretionary account.” The Lamb School won because it was able to offer the three-year option for several degrees—and because it was able to start offering those degrees this fall.
“We want Purdue to be at the front edge of innovations like this, which was the point of the prize incentive,” Mr. Daniels said in the news release.
The problem is that Purdue missed its opportunity to be in the vanguard of the idea by a couple of decades. A 2012 report from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities found that compressed degree programs, touted as a way to cut student costs since the early 1990s, “have few participants and even fewer completers.”
Ball State University, about 100 miles away from Purdue’s main campus, has offered a “Degree in Three” option since 2005. Only about 10 percent of the students who enroll in that program complete their degrees in three years, says Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communication at Ball State.
Mr. Daniels has also frozen tuition as a way to make Purdue more affordable for students and their families. That’s another increasingly common idea. At least nine states froze tuition for public colleges in 2013, according to the association of state colleges. They include California, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has reached that deal with public universities for three consecutive years.
Other measures that Mr. Daniels has put forward at Purdue are more contemporary, though they, too, are becoming more widespread. For example, Mr. Daniels has offered another $500,000 prize for the school or department that develops the best plan for a competency-based degree.
Purdue also recently announced a new deal to give students a price break on textbooks through the online retailer Amazon. That idea got its start a year ago, when Amazon arranged a similar deal with the University of California at Davis. It was Amazon that approached Purdue, Mr. Daniels says.
Amazon will establish a website specifically for Purdue students, as it did at Davis, and return a small percentage of sales to the university. In its first semester at Davis, the program generated more than $80,000 for the university.
A new twist will be that, in 2015, the online retailer will establish places where students can pick up their orders at Purdue.
“It’s not that these things haven’t all been said better or suggested somewhere else,” he says. “It’s still a little unusual that it comes from within the university.”
Bringing in Bucks
Perhaps the real key to understanding Mr. Daniels’s term as president of Purdue is to look back on his time in the governor’s office, when he earned a reputation as a business-savvy moderate.
As governor, Mr. Daniels had a higher-education record that included modest declines in per-student appropriations after the economic downturn, with a drop of 13.5 percent from the 2008 fiscal year to 2013. That is less than the 23.5-percent average decline nationally during the same period, according to figures from the State Higher Education Executive Officers.
Mr. Daniels also chartered Western Governors University of Indiana as a state college, a step that enabled residents to use state financial-aid dollars to help pay for the online, competency-based institution. Tuition at WGU Indiana is $6,000 a year for as many credits as a student can complete.
And then there is the centerpiece of his two terms as governor: a $3.8-billion deal to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a foreign investment group.
Though the move was controversial, because of the likelihood it would cause a drastic increase in tolls, it provided the financial backing for a 10-year, nearly $12-billion plan to improve the state’s highways.
Mr. Daniels has shown a similar talent for attracting big money at Purdue. During his tenure, grants and contracts for sponsored research have increased by nearly 22 percent over the previous year, according to the university’s figures, driven largely by the growth of corporate and foundation awards, which have made up a quarter of the total amount.
The university has also tripled its number of start-up companies from the previous year—there are now 24—and has seen a 20-percent increase in the number of U.S. and global patents it was issued.
Gifts to the university totaled $235-million for the most recent fiscal year—an increase of more than 7 percent—and it reversed a 10-year decline in the number of donors.
Faculty members attribute the increases to a newly configured Office of Research and Partnerships, and a growing emphasis on collaborative research and industry support—important areas of focus as federal research money tightens.
“Purdue University has among the most responsive and helpful ecosystems to assist faculty with their grant proposals,” says Suresh V. Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships.
Ms. Hart, chair of the University Senate, says many of the initiatives to improve sponsored research and commercialization predate Mr. Daniels’s term as president, but she is happy that he is pointing out those successes to the public. “His job is cheerleader in chief,” she says.
But she warns that a continued tuition freeze, static state appropriations, and stagnant faculty salaries could give some academics a reason to leave for a more supportive environment.
Mr. Daniels says that Purdue needs to continue its efforts to make college affordable and that change will not come easily at an institution “where everything seems to be going swimmingly.”
But he stops well short of the apocalyptic predictions of some higher-education critics. Technology, in his vision, will not lead to the downfall of the university. “Properly adjusted, the residential model” at Purdue still provides “good reasons to move somewhere and get something you can’t get sitting on the couch,” he says.
“It’s nice to be noticed by potential students and great scholars,” Mr. Daniels says. “But I’m glad to say, we don’t assert that we’re doing anything yet that’s truly transformational.”
Correction (1:30 p.m., 8/26/2014): This article has been updated to correct the title of Patricia Hart. She is chair, not president, of the University Senate.
