THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — Three months into his tenure as president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels leaned over a table covered with financial statements and pointed to items labeled “cash” sprinkled throughout the pages.
“That’s part of the endowment, right?” Mr. Daniels asked the school’s treasurer. “Nope,” the treasurer said, “that’s cash.”
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Mr. Daniels suggested the rainy-day funds, which totaled “somewhere in the mid-nine figures” and were kept by a host of academic departments for operating expenses, be moved out of low-interest-bearing accounts and put to better use.
It was the first of many steps Mr. Daniels has taken as he seeks to reorganize Purdue’s sometimes-antiquated systems. A year and a half into his tenure, Mr. Daniels has frozen tuition (for the first time in 36 years), cut the cost of student food by 10% and introduced volume purchasing to take advantage of economies of scale.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
