In higher education, a common scenario plays out at institutions across North America. A problem is identified, a committee is formed, good work goes into developing a well-thought-out solution, changes are implemented, and three months later the issue resurfaces. Why is that? Is it our human nature to focus on a target, meet our goals, and then move on? I honestly don’t know, but I see this play out all too often when institutions want to move programs online.
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
