Be kind. It’s my first pandemic.
I saw this statement on a button as I was scrolling through social media, and across the past three months, I have frequently returned to it as my institution has navigated the challenges associated with reopening a residential college in the time of COVID-19. For me, the primary academic leader, the weight of every decision has felt immense as I have juggled responsibilities to our students with the concerns of our faculty.
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
