Purdue too full

Purdue is creeping closer to the campus’ capacity and the acceptance rate is expected to decrease in the coming years, according to President Mung Chiang during Monday’s University Senate meeting.
“Make no mistake, we do not take pride at Purdue to have tiny, tiny acceptance rates,” he said. “That’s not the goal at all. If anything, it’s the opposite of our goal.
“However, we also recognize that we cannot simply keep accepting more and more students as the numbers of applicants continue to rise.”
Chiang’s statement comes after Purdue had just accepted its most selective class with an acceptance rate of 50% from the 72,800 students who applied, the most to ever have applied to Purdue.
In the president’s remarks, he said the decision to lower Purdue’s acceptance rate didn’t just come from the needs of the campus, but also that of the city of West Lafayette.
“As we cannot stop people from applying, the acceptance rate will continue to go down,” Chiang said. “It’s not our desire to accept a fewer percentage of applicants. It’s the reality, as many of you, maybe all of you, and tens of thousands of community members, have pointed out that we cannot roll at the rate of our applicant numbers.”
Though the number of current applicants has not yet been announced, Chiang said the number of applications has already increased from last year.
“Nov. 1, we saw the numbers, (which) seems to indicate another increase in the number of applicants, this time by about seven or eight percent, not at five as perhaps the last couple of years,” Chiang said. “But still, that number continues to climb and our (beds) available in West Lafayette don't climb at seven or ten percent each year.”
According to previous Exponent reporting, thousands of Purdue students will be left without on-campus housing for the Fall 2024 semester due to a controversial housing portal ‘pause’ for juniors and seniors.
The application portal for students to apply to join the class of 2028 is still open.
AI policy updates
Chiang also brought up small updates regarding the university’s policy on artificial intelligence.
“We have some exciting work going on in helping those students who are here to work with AI instead of against AI,” Chiang said.
That work, however, was left vaguely described during the meeting.
Purdue still has yet to adopt a university-wide policy regarding the use of artificial intelligence, but Chiang encouraged senators to continue their work towards a solution.
“As we get ready for the next semester now, we will have to look at when will be a reasonable time to provide a draft so that everybody at the University can go through it and comment on it,” Chiang said in reference to a draft of the university-wide AI policy.
The answer, according to Chiang, may be to reanalyze their policies on AI on an annual basis.
Purdue Senate Chair and professor of creative writing Brian Leung said that he hopes the AI policy will continue to move quickly and that he expects “communication” to come out shortly.
New building funded
Chiang concluded his remarks by announcing several different investment projects happening at Purdue, including the ground breaking of the Nursing and Pharmacy Education building that was funded with $160 million dollars.
According to the building's website, the Nursing and Pharmacy Education Building will be on the corner of State and Russell Streets. The building’s funding came from $89 million of state appropriations and $71 million from philanthropic assistance.
Chiang said that there are currently 23 fiscal facility projects that have been completed or started this year, costing at around $1.3 billion.
Purdue visiting staff member asked to resign
At the end of the meeting, Senator David Sanders brought forth a resolution calling upon Dean of the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, James Bullard, and Chiang to urge visiting staff member David Malpass to resign.
Malpass will be starting at Purdue on Jan. 1, 2024 and will be serving as the Distinguished Fellow of International Finance at the Daniels School of Business and the Inaugural Fellow of Global Business and Infrastructure at
Purdue@DC
, according to a press release from Nov. 1.
Malpass served as the World Bank president prior to his arrival at Purdue, and though the title may be prestigious, Sanders said there needs to be a focus on why he left in the first place.
“People started contacting me with two pieces of information,” Sanders said. “The first is ‘you do know why he was asked to step down early as World Bank president,’ and I didn’t know, and then I was told ‘you do know why he was appointed World Bank president in the first place.’”
Sanders went through the resolution, which was an amalgamation of his findings about Malpass’ career that he hoped would have appeared on the Nov. 1 press release.
“The press release was, I think, insufficient to describe this individual's career,” Sanders said. “I think it was also insufficient to describe what the actual tasks of this person was going to be.”
This wasn’t nearly his most scathing remark toward Malpass, though.
“What the proposal is, that we call upon the dean (Bullard) and President Chiang to urge Mr. Malpass to step down from this position,” Sanders said. “If you look at the description of it, it seems unnecessary and ill-defined, and also because of the nature of Mr. Malpass’ career, it really seems like this is an example of political featherbedding and political cronyism.”
Senators Robert Nawrocki and Brian Dilkes had issues with the resolution.
“My concern with the proposed resolution is that, right now, we do not currently have enough information to make any sort of judgment,” Nawrocki said. “One of my concerns is that if there is a tendency in academia to keep rejecting individuals simply because we disagree with their policies, with their points of view, then we end up creating, effectively, an echo chamber where there is only a single type of perspective and views.”
Dilkes was concerned with the assumptions that Sanders made towards Malpass’ hiring.
“If this person is qualified, great. If this person is disqualified for the reasons (listed in the resolution), then we should act on it,” Dilkes said. “Motivations, and our guesses about the motivations of the hiring, I think, should be left out. I don’t think it changes the meaning of the document to strike that line other than what Senator Nawrocki just listed as a concern.”
Sanders said that he encourages input from senators and looks forward to receiving new information about what Malpass’ position is. He was also open to striking the sentence about ‘political cronyism.’
The resolution was not put up for vote and was only considered for discussion. The resolution will be put up for action on a later date, in which the senate would require a majority to pass.
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