For nearly five decades I have watched the professoriate grow, shift, and reinvent itself. In that time, dire predictions have often failed to materialize. But what we are facing today—rapidly advancing, increasingly capable AI systems fully integrated into teaching, research, and administration—is different. And it demands decisions from academic leaders now, not later.
Beyond the Credential Factory: Why Higher Education Must Shift from Management to Flourishing
For decades, higher education leadership has obsessed over “student success” as a purely operational metric. We track retention and graduation rates and postgraduation outcomes with the same linear precision that
Yoshitaka Iwasaki
August 3, 2026
