Mitch Daniels Talks Higher Ed

Purdue University President and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels joins Sarah and Steve to talk ...

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Purdue University President and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels joins Sarah and Steve to talk about the state of higher education in America, wokeness on college campuses, and the national debt. Daniels explains Purdue’s new civics literacy test for all new students at the university, discusses his 2021 commencement speech and bringing back America’s “spirit of adventure,” and chats about riding into the ceremony on a motorized couch.

Show Notes:

–Purdue civics literacy test

–Mitch Daniels’ 2021 commencement speech

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  1. Ben P

    One note on the stats about illiberal college students. Sarah first mentions that left leaning college students are more likely than right leaning students to endorse statements we'd consider illiberal. She then mentions that Ivy League students are also more likely that students at state schools to endorse these statements.

    Before we decide this is an "Ivy" problem, we should consider whether it's really distinct from the first result comparing left and right leaning students. Googling some surveys, it seems clear that there is a much greater imbalance in political ideology among Ivy League students than among students at state schools, with very few identifying as conservative or right leaning and a large number identifying as liberal or left leaning.

    So, is the gap between the Ivies and the state schools regarding students' attitudes toward free expression due to something particular about the Ivies? Or is it all the same left/right divide we see everywhere else?

    I don't have the answer to this question but my own little internal Occam's Razor leads me toward the latter.

    ---

    Also, Mitch Daniels mentioned something about leftist ideologues denying mathematical truth. I don't doubt that this is a thing, but as a faculty member in a statistics department at a state school, I have never once heard of it. The humanities may be plenty politicized but from my vantage point I'm not concerned about mathematics education being ruined by wokeness. And it is really easy to exaggerate this stuff by focusing solely on the outrages. Day to day life at a university is thankfully more mundane than you'd think if you only read FIRE press releases.

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    Stomaino

    This Indiana University graduate totally admires the man from Purdue!

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    Jesse Blankenship

    I am sooooo in with Jonah's choice for POTUS.

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  4. Joe Curtis

    Best guest yet, y'all.

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  5. Joe Curtis

    Gov. Mitch Daniels would make a great POTUS. He may not want the job but he has all the traits that I think are necessary for the job --- he checks every box! My second choice: any eligible American that is as mature and intelligent AND is willing to seek and follow his council in all matters.

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    SD

    Also, I applaud their approach to civics literacy and the several avenues they have given students to accomplish this. But I am not sure what was meant in this discussion as safe spaces. I don't think classrooms should be shielded from discussion of difficult issues, but very much think there can be spaces outside of the classroom that are designated as "safe" for various groups of people, especially those who tend to be underrepresented in higher ed.

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    SD

    Interesting. I, too, felt people were focusing too much on the short term, rather than the long term in how they approached the pandemic, but in a very different way. Too many places were looking at the short term - being able to go on as if things were normal, rather than locking down at the beginning to get more freedoms later and fewer deaths.

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    Rajeev

    Mitch Daniels was among the most authentic fiscal conservatives the Republican party has seen in the last couple decades. He actually believed in budget cutting and not just for the other side. His State of the Union rebuttal during the Obama years was probably the most intellectually effective of all eight of them.

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  9. Frederick F

    I’m glad that Mitch Daniels has had so much success at Purdue and that an administrator like him exists. Making higher education more diverse, giving people more high quality options, is great. And I’d MUCH rather Purdue become the choice college for conservatives than somewhere like Liberty U.

    With that said, it’s both sad and infuriating that the mainstream conservative approach to higher ed is “cut the humanities, pump the money to STEM (and sports, probably).” Nothing against STEM—STEM is great and I work in it (though/because most of them can’t write...). But It’s NOT a truly conservative position at all to view culture as expendable. What would the dear departed Roger Scruton say? I guess conservatives feel they “lost” the battle over the humanities, and if they can’t have them, no one should. And it galls me all the incessant complaints about, say, CRT and deconstruction when there IS NO workable conservative approach to literature. Supposedly it’s so important to fight back against CRT, but then if you end up being a center-right guy getting his MA in English, actively looking for a new, workable heuristic, what you get is a lot of mainstream conservatives signaling that they don’t value your entire field. Very aggravating, not endearing.

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    1. Les

      I think another component of the STEM emphasis is the focus by conservatives on economic issues, or at least a different approach to solving those issues. Maybe this is inaccurate, but I think there is a stronger tendency among conservatives than liberals to view college in economic utilitarian terms as a pathway to a higher paying job (for which STEM is great) to pull oneself up. Part of me wonders if in part this is a product of the escalating cost of college. Liberals would tell you that the government needs to pay for it, and conservatives will tell you to major in something that will pay off so you can pay for it.

      All that said, one of my majors was in a STEM field, but I’m also glad I didn’t study that exclusively and went to a liberal arts college. There is something to be said for being a well rounded person rather than only studying STEM to the exclusion of other things. But then again I think if you want to study something the market doesn’t compensate, you have to be realistic about what you can expect to earn and how much debt it’s reasonable to take on to do so. I guess if I were to summarize my view here, it’s that simple/simplistic answers are likely to be wrong.

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      1. Frederick F

        Excellent points, Les. Tuition prices are insane. That’s a real problem, and I’m highly skeptical making college free is a good idea. And if you don’t have a way to pay for a humanities degree and it’s not going to pay for itself, that’s an absolutely understandable concern. What concerns me is that the purely economic calculus doesn’t take into account the value of the university as an institution. Part is teaching, job training and apprenticeships have kind of been rolled in, and a big part is research—supporting research that doesn’t have any market value, at least in the short term (though it may well pay off in the long term, or in intangible ways). The university structure survives from the medieval era, pre-capitalist. The Burkean part of me isn’t sure that the university as an institution is replaceable.

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  10. Javier Cortes

    Excellent talk. I hadn't heard of Mitch Daniels before but really enjoyed listening to him. Wouldn't mind having him on more often!

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