In 2022, just a few months away from finishing nearly a decade at the helm of Purdue University, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was asked if his brand of conservatism — pragmatic, frugal, respectful — could survive in today’s Republican Party. At first, he dodged the question, saying that after a decade at Purdue he’d essentially been in a political quarantine.
But Daniels was mulling a run for the Senate, and one advantage he’d bring back to the political arena is that he hadn’t been “infected by the viruses that are running around on both sides.”
Daniels would bring “sanity” back to Washington, a longtime friend told The New York Times. “It would be kind of like when Cicero went back to the Roman Senate to provide wisdom.”
In the end, Daniels decided not to run, but, as the Times put it, he’s “still revered among conservative intellectuals” as a principled thought leader, someone known for being able to disagree without being disagreeable.
Daniels entered politics in the 1970s as an aide to Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar and went on to work for Ronald Reagan and then George W. Bush as his budget director. He served two terms as governor of Indiana and as president of Purdue from 2013 to 2023.
Daniels writes a column for The Washington Post in which he typically writes about higher education and government. Deseret News executive editor Doug Wilks spoke to Daniels about the challenges facing higher education.
How would you assess higher education today?
Under the microscope and under pressure. And, frankly, both are appropriate. And I hope that we’ll see, where appropriate, some adjustments and corrections and some willingness to be self-critical, which higher ed has not really been known for.
What deserves to be under the microscope?
What doesn’t? I mean, certainly, affordability and accessibility — the cost has gotten beyond the reach of far too many American families. I’ll say that the standards and rigor, the quality of the product that’s being delivered at these high prices, is in many cases suspect. The number of hours that students are spending on academics in any way has dropped off substantially. Employers have been reporting for quite some time, people show up with impressive diplomas, but they’re not impressive in preparation for adult life and work. A commitment to genuine free inquiry and free speech, when you have faculties that are 99 to 1 of one viewpoint, the issue isn’t solely all those big issues, it isn’t solely that students only ever hear one point of view (and) feel intimidated about questioning the prevailing orthodoxy — it’s that the academic enterprise itself is damaged, because the assignment to advance knowledge requires the collision of different ideas, and when dissident ideas are stifled, knowledge doesn’t progress as it should.
Has that changed? In the ‘60s, early ‘70s, the unrest was certainly there on college campuses — what is different now?
Well, it’s quantifiably different, whether you’re talking about the cost or the monolithic, forced conformity of views. You can trace the charts that show the escalating cost going beyond really any other category in the economy, even health care. You can also look back over a couple generations of faculty picking their own colleagues and in the most human of ways, picking people just like them. And you do that for two decades, and you arrive where we are.
How did you combat that when you were the president of Purdue?
First of all, we asserted emphatically our commitment to free speech, and that means free inquiry as well as the ability to express oneself on public issues. I’ll say that as we became — and this was a central goal of ours — more and more STEM-centric, we were growing in every area, but we were growing by far the most in engineering and the sciences and things that we thought were central to our land grant assignment, especially in this era. And as I think a fair generalization, a campus where those disciplines predominate is less prone to politicization of everything, ideological warfare and the like. The center of gravity at a school like ours is located in the world of objective reality.
The standards and rigor, the quality of the product that’s being delivered at these high prices, is in many cases suspect.
Did the protests and encampments last spring at Columbia and other universities surprise you?
I admit, I was surprised at the blatant antisemitism. But the rest of it, I’m sad to say, was less surprising — the vacillation of administrations in the face of these problems, the unwillingness to act promptly and impose sanctions, to protect order, protect the, I’m sure, majority of students in every case who are hoping to simply pursue their education and finish the school year. I suppose we’ve seen a lot of precedents for that. So the antisemitism, the sheer ignorance of many of these young people about the facts and the history about which they had formed these sometimes violent opinions, did come as some news to me.
How would you have handled it?
I would have given short notice and then indicated that the school would enforce its rules and would have done so promptly. I think a few prompt suspensions or expulsions would have been enlightening and effective.
Did you see a campus or a college president who acted in a way that you thought was wise?
I can’t remember anyone to single out right now, but it could be that the most effective approach to this would be one in which it wasn’t necessary to take that sort of action, because the policy and the willingness to live by it was already very clear before this happened. There were a couple schools, I learned, that really didn’t have a clear rule against, for example, prolonged camping out on common space, or interference with campus operations, classes and so forth. If you didn’t have that policy, you were at some disadvantage, but if you had it, people knew that you had enforced it and were willing to and you were probably less likely to have this problem on your hands.
Let me return to affordability and accessibility. A simple question: Is a college education still worth it?
Clearly it is, if it’s the right kind of education and matches the situation of the student. Clearly, it is well worth it in many cases. We haven’t always done a good job of matching or helping young people make the right choice. I think the idea that a four-year school is for everyone was probably oversold. But yes, schools that deliver high value — which Purdue, we always said, was the gold value, which means high quality, quality over price, fundamental equation of life — I always said, where that came from, there are many, many schools where it does deliver high value. So, in that sense, yes, of course, it’s never been more valuable. But it’s equally true, I think to say, that we encouraged, partially subsidized and societally, maybe even pressured a lot of young people to go to four-year schools that turned out not to be a good choice for them. One of the consequences we’re dealing with now is an enormous number, 40 million or something Americans, who started college and didn’t finish, and it’s now clear that they are, as a general rule, not better off but worse off for the time and money they spent.
Is there a solution to that?
Yes, adult education. You’re in the backyard of Western Governors University, a really fine institution. I once served on its board, and learned about this problem and about the opportunities, especially these days, through online education or hybrid forms of education, for these people to complete a credential that is meaningful and is recognized in the market and helps them advance but that’s a patchwork on a system which didn’t serve them well the first time.
When you have faculties that are 99 to 1 of one viewpoint, the issue isn’t solely that students only ever hear one point of view (and) feel intimidated about questioning the prevailing orthodoxy — it’s that the academic enterprise itself is damaged.
If someone comes to you seeking advice, what are the factors that they should consider? What would you tell a parent?
Well, let me just say what parents have told me. Parents clearly are looking for the value I just defined. For too long, the higher ed system got away with charging ever-rising prices, because there was no measurement of quality and nobody was paying much attention. And in many cases, people came to use the sticker price as the proxy — “If it costs more, it must be a better school.” Well, it wasn’t; it almost never was. And so, the first thing you look for is value. And there’s now more information than there used to be about how the graduates of School A do versus School B, you can look at that and the cost. Then, there are many, many parents who — and young people, by the way, I’ve met scads of them over the last few years — who consider as one factor whether a school has a reputation for indoctrination and groupthink and the censorship of nonprevailing views.
Can a student get conservative viewpoints on college campuses today?
Sure, but much more rarely than they can in the broader society, which is paying for these schools. And there are many, many examples where there was almost zero balance. There is one other thing to say here, which is that Purdue did a big study with the Gallup people about a decade ago called the Gallup-Purdue Index. It surveyed people at various intervals out of college and tried to ascertain how much they were or weren’t flourishing. It wasn’t just economics — it was health, it was civic engagement, it was general happiness, and then tried to correlate that with the kind of experience they had. The shorthand for the finding that the Gallup people and our people came to is that it’s less a matter of where you go than how you go. If a young person applies herself or himself in a certain way, they’re probably going to have a useful and valuable experience, wherever they attained it. It was things like, of course, seriousness about study, but also forming a mentor-type relationship, or some kind of relationship with at least one or two faculty members while there. It was having some sort of a research experience, as part of the course of study, it was having a significant involvement — not a casual one or dabbling in extracurriculars, but a serious involvement in at least one or two things like this. I think that’s also important. There’s at least as much burden on the young person to make it valuable as there is on the school.
Did you find that valuable?
I think so. You know, it obviously made the rounds on our campus. Our young people — not me, but our students — produced a little saying that I repeated to their successors in later years: 4-3-2-1, graduate in four years or less. How did this work? Maintain a three-point (grade-point) average or better, which is not easy at our school — a three should still be something a student anywhere has to work for; at least two hours of study for every hour of class; and get really actively involved in at least one extracurricular. And that little formula, I think, is supported by the data that Gallup and Purdue collected and is a pretty good tool for any student anywhere.
And that came from the students?
Yes, that’s right. The students produced the mnemonic or whatever you would call it, the 4-3-2-1 formula.
We encouraged, partially subsidized and maybe even pressured a lot of young people to go to four-year schools that turned out not to be a good choice for them.
As you look at your life, did you have an “aha” moment? Did you come to a moment where you said, “Oh, this is what needs to happen for education,” or “This is what needs to happen for the country”?
Goodness, I don’t know. My life has been one long series of “ahas,” constantly surprised by how little I knew about some subject. I will say that like any attentive citizen, I was watching and paying attention to higher ed. Then I served in elected office those eight years and I thought that supporting Indiana’s higher ed institutions was very important. I’ll give you one example. It was during that time that Utah’s former wonderful leader, (Gov.) Mike Leavitt, came to see me, said he’s part of this thing called WGU (Western Governors University), and they wanted me to get involved in it. I did, I learned and we created what is now flourishing as WGU Indiana. So I learned about this issue that we discussed of the noncompleters, who along with those who never went to college at all, do have an option now. Life won’t permit them, of course, to move back to some campus for three or four years, but we now have ways that they can learn while dealing with life. And so that was certainly part of it. And we created WGU Indiana, which then led to WGUs in other states, kind of a private label, we would have called it in my business days. Well, after I got to Purdue, I became more and more imbued with the land grant assignment to spread higher ed as widely as possible. I used to tell our people, “We don’t want to be known by how many we turn away, we want to be known for how many we turn out,” that is, successfully graduate. And when I saw an opportunity, we bought an online university, turned it into what is called Purdue Global. And that has 36,000 or so adult learners at a time, and graduates about 12,000 people a year. Most in their 30s, 40s, single moms, veterans, all sorts of people who didn’t go a traditional route.
As you assess the future of higher education, where do you think we will go in the next 10 years?
I think the shakeout which has begun will continue. That’ll be for demographic reasons as well as loss of trust, overworking on the system. But you know, every day now you hear about another school shrinking, merging or going out of business. And so there will be a shrinkage. I hope that greater competition will do what competition typically has, which is cause schools to ask themselves, “How do we reform? How do we adjust? How do we respond to these legitimate concerns?” Once again, there’s too much of a tendency in higher ed for people to think that they know it all and any criticism is illegitimate. I hope that changes. There are a few schools which can stay that way. If you’re sitting on a multibillion-dollar endowment, I guess you can, but for the vast expanse of the system, there are lessons now that need to be learned and we’ll see who takes them on board.
This story appears in the September 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.