Purdue's new President

[t walgamuth]

The purdue board of trustees comprised entirely of folks that Mich Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana, who briefly flirted with running for President of the us last year, appointed or re-appointed, this week appointed Mich Daniels to be Purdue University's next president.

Mitch is famous for liking to ride a Harley among other things and has no academic leadership credentials whatever other than an undergrad degree from Purdue and two years of law school. Apparently the trustees feel that the university needs someone who will run it more as a business, although it is already run as a business in very many ways.

I am not certain what the exact amount is but Purdues annual budget is in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year with about 100,000 students in all its campuses. It employs about 17,000 here in West Lafayette at present.

The academic community is pretty upset about it, especially after what he has led in the secondary education system here.

It is possible that the academic part of Purdue might need some shaking up, I really don't know.

Many folks think Mitch might be gone if he has the opportunity to run for president in four years. He is a few months younger than myself at age 63.

He is the person someone here described as "Who was that old guy?" after he made a key speech a year or so ago on an important political occasion (was it the rebuttal to the state of the union?)

Local people are expecting a lot more cuts in staff and budget. I expect more outsourcing and less staff performed work.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Honus]

Similar nonsense going on at the University of Virginia. Our Board of Visitors (UVa has a different name for everything) is dominated by people who got MBA's from our graduate business school and then went off and made ungodly sums of money, much of which they gave to the University and the correct Virginia politicians. Because they did well in school and then made a lot of money, they think they are educators. Lately they've seen Harvard, MIT, and a few other elite schools putting a bunch of material out on the internet and worried that UVa was going to be left behind. So, they panicked and organized a coup to oust the popular President. The faculty and students went ballistic. Huge donors said, "No more money for you." The Governor is pissed: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/utility/docs/LetterToUVA-Board.pdf

He says that they will fix the situation by Tuesday or he will demand resignations from the entire Board of Visitors on Wednesday.

I am really sick and tired of people who think that everything should be run like a business.

The Board of Visitors apparently has not heard about how many Wahoos (that's what we call ourselves) it takes to change a light bulb. It takes four. One to call the repairman, one to pour the drinks, and two to talk about how great the old lightbulb was.

[Botnst]

Golly, it's almost as though running a public university were a political thing.