Fenster writes:

Here are some quotes.  The quiz question is to identify the job of the person who said them.

• “College costs too much and delivers too little. Students are leaving, when they graduate at all, with loads of debt but without evidence that they grew much in either knowledge or critical thinking”

• “The mission of undergraduate instruction is increasingly subordinated to research…”

• “Athletics is out of control…”

• “Shared governance implies shared accountability. It is neither equitable or workable to demand shared…power…but declare that cost control…is someone else’s problem.”

1. A writer for the National Review

2. A Republican Senator

3. A professor at Harvard’s School of Education

4. A University President

Well, since these quizzes aim toward the counterintuitive, you probably can reason out that it is #4, a university president.  Presidents never take this line publicly, especially when just coming into office and setting a tone.  Then, it is always time for soaring rhetoric about learning and opportunity, only faintly masking an orientation towards more research, more student services, more and better everything.  While keeping the existing structures in place of course.

So who is this unusual president?  It is Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana and now President of Purdue.  It will be interesting to see how and if Daniels opts to put flesh on his rhetorical bones.  For a long time both boards and presidents have been mostly parts of systems more or less on autopilot.  The first real skirmish in a possible real war involving boards, CEOs and faculties was played out at the University of Virginia.  The faculty came out on top in that skirmish, at least for the moment.  But the conflict is just beginning.