Monthly Conversation With Mitch Daniels

Quite a number of journalists took issue recently when Purdue President Mitch Daniels attempted to argue in his regular column for the Washington Post that there was too much scrutiny of government allowed by public records laws and attempts at transparency.

On this month's conversation with him, he says he’s in favor of those types of laws in principle, but do his actions – including using processes that restrict transparency in the State Street and Purdue Global deals – match up with his rhetoric?

As we were preparing for this month’s conversation with Purdue President Mitch Daniels, a question came in from a loyal listener. Why, he asked, would Purdue even consider taking the name of Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter off of the business center his $8 million gift to Purdue helped endow, even if Schnatter admits to repeating a racial slur on a conference call with his company’s executives? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to limiting free speech on campus?

In his yearly commencement address, Purdue President Mitch Daniels urged graduates to help stop the tribalism that’s plaguing the country. He also repeatedly mentioned how they could use the wealth they’ll generate to benefit society. But on this month’s conversation with him, he disagrees with the notion there’s a wealth gap in America, saying the statistics have been trumped up.

Shortly after we taped this month’s conversation with Purdue President Mitch Daniels, the school’s trustees announced he would stay on as president until at least 2021, with year-to-year contracts after his current deal ends.

As you’ll hear, the president didn’t let on during our discussion that the new contract was in the works, but he does say some interesting things about whether it’ll be him or his successor who ends the school’s tuition freeze.

Modern college classes practically require internet access. Students do research and answer online polls, but Purdue University is finding that Netflix and online gaming are taking up an unexpectedly high amount of bandwidth. So the school is considering limiting WiFi in classrooms.

On this edition of WBAA’s Monthly Conversation with Mitch Daniels, what’s a school to do in the internet age? Force students to -- GASP -- take paper notes?

One of the big themes this year at Purdue University is tracking. The school plans to better track how efficient its business process are. However, implementation of a new human capital management system has already incurred at least a half-year’s worth of delays.

Employees are being asked to track their health more closely, and are being incentivized to exercise by being offered small discounts on health insurance. But how is the school tracking whether people actually go to the gym?

Although Purdue has chosen an official name for its online University, the so-called “Purdue Global” still hasn’t received final approval from the school’s accreditation agency, the Higher Learning Commission.

In fact, Purdue officials expected to receive feedback from the HLC weeks ago, but still haven’t.

A funny thing happened when Purdue President Mitch Daniels wrote a recent editorial for the Washington Post. The article came with the headline: “Is anyone ever wrong anymore,” and hundreds of commenters on the websites of various papers that ran the opinion piece tossed the question back at the former governor and appointee of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

As the Higher Learning Commission, a regulatory body charged with accrediting colleges, gets closer to making recommendations about Purdue’s proposed merger with Kaplan University, the heat on Purdue President Mitch Daniels is increasing.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has called Purdue’s leader out specifically on Twitter, saying he’s misleading people about the deal.

When white supremacist literature began appearing on Purdue University’s campus, President Mitch Daniels said he didn’t want to spend time giving the promoters any more notice than they deserved.

But by one account, there have now been more than half-a-dozen incidents of hate speech or threatening actions on campus, and the campus community is putting increasing pressure on the president to take a side, rather than falling back on the school’s broad free speech policy.