r/Purdue • u/BluePhoenix12321 • May 18 '26
Question❓ How is Mung Chiang?
I'm a NU undergrad and am wondering what we should expect from Mung Chiang as the president
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u/ContrarianPurdueFan May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
I honestly have no idea what Mung Chiang thinks because he sounds like a robot, and it doesn't matter whether he's giving prepared remarks or talking off-the-cuff.
I don't even mean that negatively. Restraint isn't bad. I just genuinely don't know what the man believes about anything.
We did face some really inexplicable controversies with him at the helm, though. We ended a decades-long contract with the local municipal bus service for a less efficient private contractor. We tried de-facto banning graduate admissions from China, and we closed our diversity office. As admissions have increased, housing hasn't kept up (though in fairness to Mung, that's a problem he inherited.)
One upside has been that our political leaders and donors seem to legitimately love him, which has been a blessing given the state of research funding in the country.
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u/thrownaway5678923 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
Yeah, it was so odd. Every time I heard him talk, he spent most of his time going on about how Mitch Daniels had made Purdue the "most consequential university in the country". Regardless of how accurate THAT statement is, it just made me want to scream, "Brother, YOU are the president now. What are YOUR plans for Purdue?"
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u/MixerBlaze Robotics Engineering Technology '28 May 20 '26
He couldn't answer that because he would've said "leave."
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u/KartoffelLoeffel Boilermaker May 18 '26
I only have Daniels to compare him to, and you always knew what Daniels was going to do. You weren’t always going to like it (in fact as a student you rarely would), but he would telegraph it way ahead of time. I never really knew what Mung was going to do, and I think that’s deliberate. I don’t like people that work in the shadows, which is unfortunately extremely common. Daniels was not one of these people, and even though I rarely agreed with his decisions as governor or president, I could always rely on them occurring and hopefully plan around them.
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u/GapStock9843 May 18 '26
Thats true. Hes kinda a brick wall. From an outside perspective he feels more like a robot than a human.
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May 18 '26
we closed our diversity office.
I guess he's done one good thing
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u/ContrarianPurdueFan May 18 '26
If you could tell me what they ever did that was objectionable, that would be great. Nobody I've asked, including our state reps, has ever had an answer.
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May 18 '26
What do you think they do
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u/ContrarianPurdueFan May 18 '26
"Do" or did? The whole office was shuttered out of fear of regulatory scrutiny.
Do you even go to Purdue?
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May 18 '26
Okay, "did", my bad for the wrong tense, though I don't know why you wouldn't be able to understand either way.
And no, I don't go to Purdue I just hang out on the Purdue sub for fun discussing the president.
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u/ContrarianPurdueFan May 18 '26
Nah, it's just that you seem like you're astroturfing. Feel free to answer my question first, and I'll engage.
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May 18 '26
I literally answered both wdym
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u/ContrarianPurdueFan May 18 '26
If you could tell me what they ever did that was objectionable, that would be great.
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May 18 '26
Oh my b, that's not a question though. I simply think they don't do anything of value while taking up space/resources. Nothing objectionable specifically, just useless.
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u/fromthevanishingpt May 18 '26
He will do what the board of trustees wants him to. That's about all I can say for him.
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u/dvmhopeful May 18 '26
This is the correct answer. He’s a pawn to the board of trustees, who are pawns to Mike Braun.
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u/FasterThanLights May 18 '26
He’s a politician. He doesn’t care about anything except what makes him look good to the people that control his upward momentum.
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u/Psychological-Age553 May 19 '26
Get ready for your football team to be last in the big ten for the next five years
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u/bugsinhd entomology & political science May 18 '26
he was fine. not particularly controversial but not great, he tended to just do whatever gov. braun wanted
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u/RichInPitt May 18 '26
As a parent of Purdue students since 2016 - he’s no Mitch Daniels. Maybe I was spoiled - he’s about what I remember my undergrad President (CMU, long ago) being - an administrator trying hard to “relate to the students”. Maybe too hard.
Then again, I don’t see him on a day to day basis. But I wasn’t impressed by some of the strategic moves and direction of the school over the last 3 years. Not really anything bad, just not the innovation I got used to. And certainly not the communication ability.
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u/Ornery-Anywhere-4510 May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26
He probably wants to move to a big city a long time ago. At least his wife does.
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u/Square-Supermarket79 May 18 '26
Colorless right wing bureaucrat... likely to pursue privatization and further integration of the uni with corporate interests. You won't hear or see much of him.
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u/AlexSandman8964 May 18 '26
Well my biggest complaint was that more free parking lots in the past are now metered
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u/Melgel4444 May 19 '26
He has no principals , and is pretty money focused in a bad way
Some things he’s done include: take away the only 2 streets of free parking on the entire campus & tear down a bunch of historic buildings on campus
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u/NB_Skip Game Design c/o 2027 May 19 '26
All he cares about is right-wing politics and ice cream. I don't know if you guys have any DEI programs in place but he killed off a lot of them here.
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u/theyfellforthedecoy May 19 '26
That was a state directive tho
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u/NB_Skip Game Design c/o 2027 May 19 '26
If I remember correctly, didn't he act before the state directive was finalized? I could be wrong but I remember seeing other schools maintain their respective programs. I know he also shut down some stuff that wasn't actually (or at least, not entirely) DEI-related, such as the RRD office in the Polytech or the ELS program.
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u/HanTheMan34 May 18 '26
Whole lotta ice cream and pandering to the current administration
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u/haikusbot May 18 '26
Whole lotta ice cream and
Pandering to the current
Administration
- HanTheMan34
I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.
Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"
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u/greencat26 May 18 '26
I'm not entirely unconvinced the man isn't a robot made by the school. He seems suspiciously scripted.
(I don't actually believe this but the chances of this being the case also are not 0%).
He's liked by the rich people so that'll be good for your school. Could be worse people in charge, definitely could be better
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u/TheLuckyHundred PoliSci/Hist 2026 May 19 '26
He's a prestige seeker that will be gone in four years for greener pastures. He's going to be a powerful person that doesn't care about you and will be gone soon. Take that as you will.
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u/GapStock9843 May 18 '26
I mean theres nothing particularly terrible about him, but nothing necessarily great either. He likes making budget cuts to net himself a bigger paycheck, but it probably wont be too egregious.
Also be prepared to NEVER have class canceled, no matter how insanely cold it is outside. The most hes ever done at Purdue was like a 3 hour delay
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u/ocean_paddler May 18 '26
In my opinion, he was just a continuation of the Mitch Daniels Decade from the previous president. Nothing new, just more enshitification. He finished his contract and boosted his resume. That’s it.
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u/This-Grape-5149 May 18 '26
So no legacy ?
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u/ocean_paddler May 18 '26
His only legacy I can think of is dissolving IUPUI into Purdue Indy and selling it as the same grand experience. But that’s my opinion.
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u/vhalember May 19 '26
Purdue Indy is marketing a cooperation failure between Purdue and IU as "success."
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u/Macknificent101 Game Design and Dev 2026 May 18 '26
he’s not bad but he’s not good either. probably gonna outsource what few good things are left.
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u/PiggyPump May 18 '26
We have been betrayed by Chiang Kai-shek.
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u/rietveldrefinement May 18 '26
NU graduated and had to deal with the consequences of Chiang Kai Shek….please don’t….
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u/joemomma5730 May 19 '26
If NU has any Greek life, consider it gone. He tried his very best to kill ours.
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u/ZombiePope May 18 '26
Expect a whole lot of nothing special, privatizing everything good about your school, and licking boots so hard it stains his tongue.
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u/DarthRayleigh CompE 2021 May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26
Luckily I graduated right before he became the president
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u/JewelCared May 19 '26
I shall be praying for y'all. Sincerely. 🙏🏾 You will enjoy the ice cream though, and hear about AI and semiconductors until you no longer notice that nothing is affordable and your buildings are crumbling because what even is maintenance....
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May 18 '26
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u/thrownaway5678923 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
He's pretty meh. Just wait until he starts outsourcing all of your campus services and cutting budgets so he can earn a big raise for himself.