BY DAVE NALBONE
Recently, Purdue University Global (PUG) announced that it would abide by federal laws prohibiting the use of forced arbitration to resolve disputes by its students, which until then had been a requirement of its students in order to enroll. This predatory practice dated to PUG’s former iteration, the for-profit and predatory Kaplan University, which also imposed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) on its (largely contingent) faculty. In the fall, through pressure from the Indiana state AAUP conference and the AAUP national office, PUG rescinded the NDA requirement, and we (along with a resurgent Purdue-West Lafayette chapter) continued to pressure it to similarly do away with forced arbitration, a practice apparently put in place to stave off lawsuits from disaffected students (of which there apparently are many).
Why did these positive developments occur? Well, if you listen to the PUG leadership, they were already in the plans, and were thus not a function of our pressure campaign. You should believe that as much as if I said that I had plans for the sun to set each night, and it does so because of my plans. The timing of these policy reversals (especially in light of the one thing that PUG and Purdue’s system president, the former governor Mitch Daniels, care least to endure—namely, bad publicity highlighting its shady and predatory practices) indicates that our efforts led directly to these policy reversals, and thus should be counted as another victory for AAUP principles in overturning predatory (and anti-student and anti-faculty) policies.
We continue to pressure PUG to be more (or, at all) transparent in its functioning. It was created as a public-benefit corporation—and thus is shielded from state open-records laws—by special legislation enacted on the same day (the final day of the legislative session) as it was created. Not surprisingly, Mr. Daniels claimed that this was simply a happy coincidence that was not orchestrated. (If you believe that, please contact me directly, as I have some very cheap oceanfront property in Iowa you should purchase.) It is clear that PUG is being used as the “cash cow” to fund Purdue’s (or rather, Purdue’s main campus’s) actions, including an eight-year tuition freeze—which, in typical Daniels fashion, is being pitched as occurring at “Purdue” when it only occurs at Purdue’s main campus (and thus not at the regional campuses, or at PUG). This lack of integrity, coupled with the opacity of its operations, caution us to remain vigilant in defense of faculty rights, student rights, and the public good on which a public university does (and should) rest.
Guest blogger Dave Nalbone is president of the Indiana AAUP conference. He is a professor of social psychology at Purdue University Northwest.
