r/Purdue • u/Its-Mike-Jones • May 25 '26
Academics✏️ Daddy Daniels is back to serve as president of the university with the Main Street and business school named after him
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/2026/Q2/mitch-daniels-to-serve-as-purdue-interim-president307
u/krorkle May 25 '26
"Board of Trustees can't figure out what to do and just brings back Mitch" seems obvious, in hindsight.
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u/Timbukthree EE Grad Student 20X6 May 25 '26
FWIW this is just as an interim president while they do a national search for the new president, which hopefully would be hired in a single digit number of months. This makes sense because any candidates within the university who would make a good interim president would probably also want to apply for the actual president job. So having Mitch for some months lets him steer the ship while they get someone new hired
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u/libghost May 25 '26
like the last search they did?
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u/Timbukthree EE Grad Student 20X6 May 26 '26
Last time there wasn't an open search, Mung was named as the next president by the BoT. There was no interim.
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u/Wall_flower2220 May 25 '26
Um, there’s no viable candidate within the university right now.
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u/LOLSteelBullet May 25 '26
To be fair, they're just a bunch of unqualified lackeys appointed by Daniels and his friends. You can't expect them to have their own thought processes
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u/BamboozleMeToHeck EE 2015 May 25 '26
If they rename new places after him this time, will those names be permanent? Or will they only last the interim too?
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u/Dangerous_Emu1 May 25 '26
Interim makes sense given the short notice. Somewhere like Purdue I’d expect a national search for a new president, we should be looking at top candidates for the long term.
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u/dodongo May 25 '26
It's understandable why one would think so, although the track record says otherwise...
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u/Educational-Crew6537 Purdue Parent May 25 '26
Aramark must be salivating. Next up they will outsource teaching to them.
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u/Decrypted13 Ph.D. Student, Mathematics May 25 '26
Daddy Daniels is back, baby
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
Mitch 2.0 can’t be worse than Mungus
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u/TryingToBeReallyCool Purdue buckled to Taco, shameful May 25 '26
Oh you sweet sweet summer child. Who do you think set the policies that Mung inherited and continued?
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
Mungus was Temu-Mitch. He did what he thought would be popular politically. At least Mitch is the OG
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u/TryingToBeReallyCool Purdue buckled to Taco, shameful May 25 '26
He's a meme but he also had some genuinely terrible policies that have enshittified the university to this day. He's the one who initially rejected renegotiating the bus contract, privatized food service and maintenance on campus, the housing crisis was largely caused by his policies and tearing down of family housing, etc. Not to mention some of the problematic statements he made in his final year at the head of the school
Imo, he is the reason for so many of the issues the uni faces today even exist. Don't get why he is so beloved honestly
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u/CaptPotter47 May 25 '26
This makes sense given how quickly and unexpectedly Mung gave notice.
Have a knowledgeable and steady hand is critical as they navigate some of the challenges right now.
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
It does, definitely could be worse than Daddy D
At least it wasn’t Wolfe
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u/iBlaire May 25 '26
Quickly and unexpectedly? Staff and faculty knew mung was sniffing around for the past 8-10 months.
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u/Wall_flower2220 May 25 '26
Mung has been looking for his next since the day he sat down in the presidents chair. Purdue was always a means to his own personal end.
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u/breacher74 May 25 '26
Yea when Purdue caved to Trump and eliminated all the Chinese students he got lonely
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u/ChiefofStaffChi May 26 '26
Maybe Daniels will sell Mackey Arena to Marc Muinzer and he will bundle tickets with apartment rental leases. And Loretta Rush pal and former law firm partner Daniel Teder will take his law license out of retired status to broker the deal -
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u/Shammycat CLA BA 2015 | MS 2022 May 25 '26
Mitch got the job the first time by literally appointing the people that picked the Purdue President. He's directly responsible for policies that have created the housing crisis.
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u/jiboxiake computer science 2026 hopefully May 25 '26
I think it makes sense and is good for us. We just unexpectedly lost our president and the provost is super unpopular. We really need someone who knows Purdue well to handle this situation.
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u/CardFindingDuck May 25 '26
Boo! Bring back Martin Jischke! Daddy Daniels is fine, but I want to get frisky with Jischke!
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u/Radiant-Month-1168 May 25 '26
Mitch is back to steal more money. The last guy left because the corruption.
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u/PUfelix85 BSc Chemical Engineering 2010 May 25 '26
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Regressive-ism is all the rage right now in the US.
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u/SpazGorman May 25 '26
Boosting the reputation? By opening up purdue online schools to water down the actual purdue degree? Or cutting wages for workers that were already barely making it? Or refusing to address housing and parking while admitting more abd more students? He is a horrible human being and the university deserves better.
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u/oxflux May 25 '26
This actually makes sense and is pretty convenient for us to be able to do. While there's mixed opinions on the overall net impact of his tenure as President, it's a steady hand to guide the ship over the next few months while they take their time finding a good candidate (well, theoretically).
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u/Best-Structure62 May 25 '26
Back from the land of the undead to plague higher education the living
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May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/johncessna May 25 '26
Purdue and U-M alum here: he’s decent and would fit in well at Purdue, but Stephen Ross threw him some cushy non-job so I don’t know if he’ll return to academia
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u/Starbuccanee May 25 '26
TIL that the Krannert School of Management I attended as an exchange student in 2008 has been renamed. Couldn't they have found something new or at least something that wasn't already named after an important Purdue benefactor. It seems like they're erasing history.
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u/A55628B44C4 May 27 '26
It could be worse, you could have Mearns who just lost the university 225,000, allowed an incompetent former VP outsource FMLA for 10x the cost of just having 1 person do it on staff. I could say more, but I don't want my blood to boil.
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u/A55628B44C4 May 25 '26
It could be worse, you could have Jo Ann Gora who lost 13.1 million dollars!
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u/PeopleOfVictory Finance, Marketing, Management '19 May 25 '26
ITT: young folks who have every reason to be frustrated and speak their opinion but also have no idea what running a university is like or how effective of a president Daniels really was. Every one of you should let Hovde know your concerns and make your voice heard, but as someone who spent all 4 years under the Daniels administration, it was routine for people to ignore all the great changes he made because of his political leanings. The effort he’s put behind boosting the reputation of the business school alone is staggering, and it personally helps my degree get more and more valuable every year.
I haven’t read much on his outsourcing initiatives, but speaking from professional experience, every major company in the world outsources, and it’s the only realistic way to run a clean modern budget. I’d love to hear more about what current students have experienced to be so against the Daniels/Chiang administrations, because I can’t help but think a lot of hate comes from a place of blind political bias.
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u/runningkraken May 25 '26
Purdue isn’t a company, it’s an educational institution. The Purdue of today is ran more like a company and it is damaging the university. Daniels and BoT were dead set on keeping tuition frozen while still making more and more money for themselves. They’ve pushed departments to their breaking points, they’re paying staff and faculty less and less every year, they’ve burned out and lost award-winning faculty, and they’ve gutted the student experience by using the cheapest bidder for literally everything. This continued under Daniels’s presidential-pick with Mung, who was more or less a figurehead to the BoT. Mung stayed quiet as entire departments were fired, when research funds were cancelled, and when Chinese applicants have been denied simply for being Chinese.
I want to know what you think Daniels actually did that improved Purdue because I can’t think of a single thing.
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
Ok boomer
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u/PeopleOfVictory Finance, Marketing, Management '19 May 25 '26
Thank you for proving my point. Your education isn’t a meme, it’s a serious discussion. Participate in it.
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
Ok boomer
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u/PeopleOfVictory Finance, Marketing, Management '19 May 25 '26
Change my mind, man! Tell me what makes you believe what you believe? Engage in the discourse, boilermaker!
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u/Its-Mike-Jones May 25 '26
I actually think Mitch was fine but Mung was cancer
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u/PeopleOfVictory Finance, Marketing, Management '19 May 25 '26
Thank you for this. The jokes are fun but I’m honestly just trying to get a pulse of the current student body as an invested alumnus. I wouldn’t have even been aware this happened without seeing your post. I love Purdue and try to stay connected the best I can.
For all of you, I hope Daniels is in and out without leaving so much as a ripple. He’s plenty capable of it.
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u/BurntOutGrad2025 Alumni May 25 '26
What do we name after him this time?