EDITOR’S INTRO
Mitch Daniels , the Harley Davidson- riding, state-touring, cost-focused former governor of Indiana has hung up his political boots (for now) and embraced his role as the Harley Davidson-riding, state-touring, cost-focused president of Purdue University... He’s also one of a very few Republicans who are actually liked by the media... always the subject of “what if” scenarios around the runup to presidential elections. Politico called him the most important governor who didn’t run in 2016... and the Washington Post said similar in an article headlined “Purdue has the president America needs.” As governor, he turned a $200 million deficit into a $2 billion post- recession surplus, lowered taxes, and kept debt low. Now, he hopes to pull the same sort of trick with higher education. Mitch has graciously given us permission to run an edited and condensed version of his 2018 Annual Open Letter to Purdue University. Read on for how one man is changing education... and taking bold steps to do so.
Our affordability policy, which we see as simply a matter of duty and common
sense, is regularly
described as some kind of breakthrough.
INNOVATIONWITHIN ANDWITHOUT
As a sector, American higher education is home to a number of ironies. Perhaps the most discussed in recent years is the sad extent to which the places where free inquiry and the clash of ideas should be most revered have often become bastions of conformity and groupthink. But another paradox is that so many of these hothouses of scientific and technical innovation, which give birth to so
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Steven Longenecker, Managing Editor and Purdue Class of 2009
American Consequences 27
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