Evidence-based, student-centered teaching has a profound impact on student outcomes, including enhanced learning, persistence, degree attainment, employment, and earnings (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2025). Although the use of evidence-based teaching has improved in certain disciplines and institutions, it is not yet the norm in higher education (Zimmerman, 2020). Academic leaders have a significant opportunity to shepherd teaching excellence at scale in higher education.
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
