The work of a dean is challenging, and many deans are appointed to their positions without any formal training. Deans often learn how to hire faculty, conduct performance reviews, develop budgets, secure grant funding, design learning spaces, and resolve conflicts on their own. This is neither efficient nor practical. Deans who are lucky enough to have an associate dean to help them may be able to manage their workload more effectively.
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
