Forbes Asia - October 2018

OCTOBER 2018 FORBES ASIA | 39

WAITING FOR Mitch Daniels to

pick up a call to his oice in We s t

Lafayette, Indiana, you hear a re-

cording of Purdue’s marching band

followed by a hard-to-believe state-

ment: “Purdue has frozen tuition

at 2012 levels through 2019 for all

undergraduate students.”

Daniels, the president of In-

diana’s lagship public university,

then gets on the phone and says

something even more startling: In

inlation-adjusted dollars, Pur-

due costs $4,000 less per year for

out-of-state students than it did

when he took the job in 201 3.

In-staters pay nearly $3,000 less, at

just under $23,000 this academic

year for tuition, room, board and

expenses.

Back in 201 3, Daniels, now 69,

dashed hopes that he would run

for the Republican presidential

nomination, signing on at Purdue

instead ater two terms as Indiana’s

popular moderate GOP gover-

nor—and setting out to ix the bro-

ken business of higher ed. His irst

priority: make good on Purdue’s

mission as a land-grant university,

a designation dating back to the

Civil Wa r, when the federal gov-

ernment allotted land and funds

to universities that would teach

agriculture and the mechanical arts

to working-class Americans.

Daniels believed Purdue wasn’t

fulilling that mission. “he only

costs that have outrun healthcare

in the last three decades are college

tuition, room and board,” he says.

His solution: Freeze student costs

at 2012 levels. Purdue’s admissions

stafers balked. “I said, ‘Look, I just

landed here on Mars, and I can tell

you that the people back on Earth

think college costs too much.’ ”

Attacking afordability from an-

other angle, in 2016 he introduced

income-share agreements. Students

who exhaust federal loans can fund

their education with an agreement

to sign over a share of their future

income, usually between 3%

and 5 % for up to ten years ater

they graduate. (Repayments are

capped at 2. 5 times initial costs.)

Critics hate ISAs because they’re

unregulated and untested. Milton

Friedman is said to have invented

the idea but famously noted that

they were “economically equivalent

... to partial slavery.” Daniels says,
“If you want indentured servitude,

it’s the student-loan program. With

ISAs, the risk shits entirely to the

lender,” since grads who don’t ind

work pay nothing.

Daniels’ third bold move invited

the most criticism from higher-ed

purists. Last year he paid $1—yes,

a dollar—to acquire the belea-

guered for-proit, largely online

Kaplan University from former

Washington Post owner Graham

Holdings Co. Purdue instantly

boosted its enrollment by 30,000

Kaplan students—most of whom

are female, between the ages of

30 and 60, and the irst in their

families to go to college. hey are

now working toward degrees at the

newly named Purdue Global Uni-

versity. Ater Purdue covers operat-

ing costs and collects $ 50 million in

tuition, Kap lan is entitled to 1 2. 5 %

of Purdue Global’s revenue.

So far, so good. Applications

are up 67% since Daniels became

president. Enrollment is at an all-

time high, as are alumni donations,

graduation rates and the number

of startups launched by Purdue

researchers. Purdue also ranks

No. 126 on Forbes’ list of America’s

top colleges, up from No. 143 last

year. While other institutions are

cutting tenure-track jobs, Purdue

has added 75 tenured engineering

professorships and increased the

number of students earning STEM

degrees by 33% (minorities are up

5 0%).

hen there’s Boiler Gold, a crat

beer on which Purdue’s hops and

brewing analysis lab is collaborat-

ing with a local brewer. “It started

as a research project,” says Daniels,

“and now we can’t make the stuf

fast enough.”

1Enrollment is total number of undergraduates. Annual cost is the estimated total cost of attendance for out-of-state students living on campus in 2017–2018.
2Tuition is for the 2017–2018 academic year. Source: National Center for Education Statistics.

1

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles

TUITION2

$13,261

2

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

BERKELEY

Berkeley, CA

$14,170

3

BRIGHAM

YOUNG

UNIVERSITY

Provo, UT

$5,460

4

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

IRVINE

Irvine, CA

$13,738

5

UNIVERSITY OF

WASHINGTON–

SEATTLE

Seattle

$10,974

BEST VALUE SCHOOLS

These universities score well on net price, net student debt, alumni earnings,

timely graduation, school quality and access for low-income students.

For public institutions, we used in-state tuition. To see the full list of

Best Value Colleges, go to forbes.com/best-value-colleges.

6

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

Cambridge, MA

$48,949

7

STANFORD

UNIVERSITY

Stanford, CA

$49,617

8

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

Princeton, NJ

$47,140

9

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

SAN DIEGO

La Jolla, CA

$14,018

10

AMHERST

COLLEGE

Amherst, MA

$54,310

THE MOST GRATEFUL GRADS

How to measure college ROI: Find the schools with the alumni who give back in droves.

7-YEAR MEDIAN 3-YEAR 2018

DONATIONS PER AVERAGE ALUMNI GRATEFUL

COLLEGE STUDENT PARTICIPATION GRAD INDEX

1 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE $24,039 41.3% 99.81

2 WILLIAMS COLLEGE 23,434 47.8 99.77

3 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 23,536 40.5 99.67

4 AMHERST COLLEGE 21,354 45.1 99.38

5 DAVIDSON COLLEGE 19,994 44.5 99.05

6 CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE 22,776 33.8 98.8

7 HAVERFORD COLLEGE 19,810 38.1 98.68

8 WELLESLEY COLLEGE 16,328 49.0 97.79

9 WABASH COLLEGE 19,850 31.4 97.78

10 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 17,472 35.5 97.64

F

Purdue’s Bold Plan

Mitch Daniels wants to make college more

aordable and increase his university’s

enrollment. Higher-ed purists are aghast.

TOP: TIMPANNELL FOR FORBES

BY SUSAN ADAMS