What does it mean to be a leader? Interest in the study of leadership continues to grow, and colleges and universities are taking notice by rolling out new programs. Current degree plans include majors and minors containing the words “leadership studies” and similar. Higher education students can now choose to study leadership within their chosen profession or as a separate discipline altogether. As a result, students are learning that because leadership encompasses many facets, defining actual leadership remains difficult.
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
