To be relevant in the future for our changing society and world, higher education must adapt, embrace disruption and uncertainty, and learn to navigate constant flux. With the looming demographic cliff, questions over the cost and value of a degree, financial scarcity, ideological challenges, and the politicization of education, the status quo no longer suffices for most institutions. And that will only accelerate in the future.
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
