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 a factory line uses to track throughput. Under pressure from boards, legislators, and public skepticism, we have often treated student success as an isolated goal to be managed through transactional compliance.
Expertise, Credentials, and the Value of the University
It seems we can’t trust our own credentials or those that we provide to our students. Or perhaps it would be better to say that we have so much confidence
Constance C. Relihan
May 18, 2026
