Kind of landed right in the wheelhouse of where my mind was as I'd just had a conversation about the Mitchmeister at Purdue and whether he had actually cut any administrative costs in things like marketing or had merely laid people off and outsourced to private firms.
Not that I'm at all opposed to streamlining higher ed as much as can be done.
What bothers me is the bait and switch on special fees and a hard shift to international students who pay top dollar- that's a lot like Monsanto and the Koch led nitrogen cartel are streamlining agriculture.
And fwiw, faculty aren't really kicking because it is part of a game that keeps the fellow travellers in the legislature funding the university (Indiana has done realtively well in that regard) and thus there's not a lot of real kicking from faculty because they understand what the scam is as well.
The other part is positioning Purdue as sort of the Hillsdale College of major higher ed- since Mitch doesn't go in for any of that Mizzou/Yale sort of business there will probably be plenty of out of state folks willing to pay top dollar to send their kids there to become good drones.
All good strategic marketing.
