Dr. Richard Vedder
Dr. Richard Vedder, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University, authored a column headlined “Mitch Daniels Has the Right Stuff for Purdue.”
His column appeared on the website for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
Higher education does not produce many flashy, innovating entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, or Elon Musk. The non-profit, highly subsidized, and low-incentive culture that universities operate in promotes conformity and risk avoidance.
Despite that, there are some college leaders who stand out from the rest. Paul LeBlanc, for example, has taken Southern New Hampshire University from being a sleepy little college of 2,500 to become one of the leading national players in online education, with 80,000 or so students. At mainline state universities, Michael Crow has been a dynamic leader at Arizona State, and Gordon Gee is legendary for his leadership of not one but five universities, including three land-grant schools (Ohio State, Colorado, and West Virginia) and two prestigious private institutions, Brown and Vanderbilt.
But the single most exemplary leader of American higher education today in my judgment is Mitch Daniels at Purdue University. When he leaves Purdue’s presidency, tentatively planned for 2020 at age 71, the tuition level will be the same as it was when he took office at the beginning of 2013—over seven years earlier. Correcting for inflation, published tuition fees probably will have fallen a good 10 percent during the Daniels presidency. Since incomes are rising (albeit perhaps too slowly), the burden of becoming a Purdue Boilermaker has been steadily declining—in marked contrast to earlier in history.
Read the rest of Vedder’s column.
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