Data and analytics often help senior leadership at higher education institutions understand students better. But to truly put students first, leadership must go beyond data and uncover student stories.

As ethical practitioners and educators, we must leave no student’s confusion to themselves; we work, and work hard, to discover ourselves, academic credit or no, tenure or no, quantifiable results or no.

The idea of higher education as a public good is challenged. We must cultivate humanity at the senior leadership levels at colleges and universities to engage, support, and advance student learning.