Bombardieri (2019) observed, “College officials cannot close achievement gaps that they don’t know exist. They need encouragement, support, and even public pressure to take a clear-eyed look at their own shortcomings” (para. 10). Equity audits have been part of the P–12 education landscape for many years, but they are still relatively new to higher education. Part two of this series described how equity audits can be used to develop equity-minded educational leaders. This article, the final part of the series, provides a step-by-step process for conducting equity audits in college and university settings.
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
