In colleges and universities across the country, some very serious people are beginning to ask whether grades, graduation rates, rankings, return on investment, or even starting salaries are the best measure of their school’s success. In fact, many of these institutions of higher learning are turning to more comprehensive metrics to try to measure whether students are actually flourishing.

Marjorie Malpiede, editor in chief of LearningWell magazine and host of LearningWell Radio, has been following this movement from its early days. She and an amazing organization called the LearningWell Coalition are illuminating a real movement already underway among colleges, universities, researchers, educators, and student-support leaders who are doing the practical, patient, often uncelebrated work of helping young people thrive. 

How Do Colleges and Universities Measure Success?

For generations, we have asked young people to run one of the most demanding obstacle courses of their lives—academic pressure, financial pressure, loneliness, identity questions, family expectations, career anxiety, social media overwhelm—and then we have often measured the outcome with numbers that tell us only part of the story.

Did they graduate? Did they get a job? How much was their starting pay?

These are all important questions, of course, but there is another set of questions rising now, and they may be the ones that matter most. What Marj and the LearningWell community are bringing into view is a serious reimagining of what education is for—a realignment of what questions we ask when judging the success of higher education.

Are they becoming happy, resilient, whole people? Do they feel that they belong? Are they building the inner resources to navigate a complicated world? Are they discovering purpose, connection, agency, and a sense that their lives can matter?

These questions do not replace academic excellence, or dismiss measurable outcomes. Rather, they force us to look at the system with new eyes; to ask ourselves whether our measurements are wide enough to include what actually helps human beings thrive. That matters immensely, because colleges and universities are not merely preparing workers, but shaping people at one of the most formative points in their lives. The professionals doing this work are helping higher education remember that students are whole human beings in the making—future citizens with open minds and open hearts, both ready to be filled with whatever lessons are given to them. 

And once you see education through that lens, everything changes.

How Does the LearningWell Coalition Measure Success?

The LearningWell Coalition, which publishes LearningWell Magazine, brings together more than forty colleges and universities around a beautifully simple idea: college should help students become whole, capable, connected human beings — not just graduates with a transcript and a résumé.

Together, these schools are sharing what works, learning from one another, and putting evidence-based practices into motion so students are better prepared for real life: meaningful work, healthy relationships, resilience, purpose, and all the messy, beautiful parts of being human.

That commitment deserves to be named (and I am including these names here because I am only a few years away from being a parent of three college students, and I know we would have zeroed in on these schools had we understood this kind of commitment was even on the table.)

The Coalition includes a remarkable range of institutions: Arizona State University, Bates College, Belmont University, Bentley University, Boston College, Bucknell University, Drew University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida Atlantic University, Georgetown University, Gustavus Adolphus College, Kent State University, Lehigh University, MIT, Ohio Northern University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Olin College of Engineering, Roanoke College, Texas Tech University System, Tufts University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Denver, the University of Dubuque, the University of Florida, the University of Maine, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the University of Southern California, the University of St. Thomas, the University of Utah, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley College, and others helping widen the field through affiliate participation, including Aalborg University, Soka University of America, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

That length of that list is proof of the strength of this concept. This is not one kind of school, one region, one ideology, one institutional personality, or one narrow theory of education. The Coalition reaches across public and private institutions, large universities and smaller colleges, engineering schools and liberal arts campuses, and faith-rooted institutions and major research universities. That breadth is part of what makes the work so hopeful.

These schools are also not all doing the same thing in the same way, and that may be the true genius of it. Each campus has its own history, pressures, students, strengths, and constraints: what belonging looks like at a large public university may not look exactly like belonging at a small residential college; what purpose formation looks like at an engineering school may not look exactly like purpose formation at a liberal arts institution.

The shared commitment, however, is powerful: these institutions are saying that a college education should do more than help students complete a degree. It should help them build the knowledge, relationships, inner resources, and sense of purpose that allow them to flourish in work and in life.

That is a big promise, and a brave one, because the work of flourishing refuses to stay neatly inside one box. It asks everyone to widen the lens—an action that can face significant resistance, both internal and external, when done alone.

The LearningWell Coalition gives these institutions a place to do that widening together, creating a space where presidents, provosts, faculty members, student affairs leaders, researchers, counselors, advisors, and innovators can learn from one another, instead of reinventing the wheel alone. It helps turn scattered experiments into shared knowledge, helps good work become visible, and gives language and legitimacy to efforts that might otherwise remain hidden in one department or one program, or even on one passionate team.

LearningWell Magazine Tells the Story of Student Flourishing

This is where LearningWell Magazine deserves its own spotlight, because it is not simply a publication about student wellbeing. It is a place where the emerging field of Student Flourishing is being documented with seriousness, nuance, and heart, through carefully researched reporting, crafted by reporters with both the expertise and the storytelling ability to show the world why this matters so much. LearningWell gives shape and visibility to work that might otherwise remain scattered across campuses, conferences, committees, and pilot programs.

That kind of storytelling can be a greater help than most would imagine, because as anyone who has worked inside an institution knows, it is incredibly easy—even commonplace—for good work to remain invisible. A program here, a faculty member trying something brave there; a student-life team building belonging in ways that buoys the whole campus, but never makes headlines. LearningWell Magazine brings those efforts into the light and says: this is worth noticing. This is worth learning from. It’s part of a larger reimagining of what higher education can do when it takes the whole student seriously.

LearningWell Radio extends that same work in conversation after conversation, creating space for higher education leaders, authors, researchers, innovators, and campus practitioners to speak in a way that feels both thoughtful and usable. The result is a living archive of people wrestling, not with abstract theory, but with the practical questions: What actually works? What have we learned? What does it take to build programs, cultures, and systems where students can thrive?

The “Invented Here” series may be one of the clearest examples of why LearningWell Radio is so valuable: by featuring the people who have built innovative programs at Coalition schools, this series honors the builders—the faculty, staff, administrators, and campus leaders—doing the hard work on the ground, finding out how and why these ideas become practice.

That is the gift of Marj’s work across the magazine, the podcast, and the Coalition: she is helping the field hear itself think, recognize its own momentum, and learn from the people who are already building the future. That’s a pattern that tends to precede immense innovation, because it is often where the future first becomes visible.

Changing Our Definition of ‘Academic Rigor’

We often imagine change as something that arrives with a big announcement, a sweeping reform, or a single heroic leader, but many of the most important shifts begin more quietly. People in different places start sensing the same need, so they experiment; then they name what they are learning. They find one another, realize they are not alone in this need, and before long what once seemed marginal begins to look inevitable.

The people and institutions involved in this work are not waiting for every answer to appear before they begin. The need is already here, so they’re meeting it wherever it is. That way, when students are arriving on campuses with big questions—not only about majors and careers, but about identity, uncertainty, hope, anxiety, and meaning—they’ll be able to get helpful, reliable answers, of the same quality they could expect from any professor in their chosen field.

This is not an argument against academic rigor. Rather, it is an argument for a fuller definition of rigor. After all, it takes rigor to build a campus culture where students are known, to measure what has often been dismissed as immeasurable; to ask whether our systems are producing people who are not only employable, but also grounded, purposeful, and able to contribute meaningfully to the world around them. It takes rigor to move beyond slogans about wellness and into practices that actually change students’ lives.

The institutions in the LearningWell Coalition are helping make that rigor visible, because the questions these institutions are asking are really questions for all of us: 

• What does it mean to flourish in a time of uncertainty? 
• How do we build communities where people feel seen and needed? 
• How do we help young people develop not only ambition, but also inner steadiness? 
• How do we measure success without shrinking the human spirit down to a number?

These questions matter in families, workplaces, neighborhoods, healthcare systems, businesses, and civic life. They matter anywhere human beings are trying to become more capable, more connected, and more alive.

When we widen the lens this way, the work of colleges and universities becomes both more practical and more profound. Yes, students need knowledge, skills, credentials, and pathways into meaningful work—but they also need the inner architecture to live with compassion, courage, and a sense of agency. They need to know how to think critically; how to belong without merely being compliant; how to compete and still connect. They need to know how to achieve, yes, but also how to recover. 

Marjorie Malpiede’s great gift is that she seems to understand both the tenderness and the seriousness of this work. She and those at LearningWell are not waving a banner for easy answers. She is making room for thoughtful people to wrestle with better questions and learn from one another as they go.

This is a cultural turning point: some of our most influential institutions are beginning to remember that human beings are not machines to be optimized. Higher education may be holding one of the most important laboratories for human flourishing in our time, and they’re doing it simply because so many people inside it have been brave enough to ask the fuller questions—and because the institutions gathered around LearningWell are showing what it can look like when those questions become practice.

The LearningWell Network:

• LearningWell Magazine
• LearningWell Radio
• The LearningWell Coalition

Conspiracy of Goodness Episodes:

• An Astronaut’s View: Flourishing on Spaceship Earth Together with Nicole Stott (Episode #181)
• ‘Are You Flourishing? Here’s How You Can’ with Matthew Lee (Episode #185)
• How to Live Life In Your Zone of Genius with Gay Hendricks (Episode #189)
• Unlocking Potential: The Real Tools Students Need to Thrive with AJ Crabill (Episode #203)
• Beyond the Canvas: Using Art to Tackle Big Conversations with Sabrina Phillips (Episode #211)
• A Work in Progress and a Masterpiece: Permission to Be Both with Dr. Latif Murji (Episode #228)
• What Dogs Teach Us About Life with Master Storyteller Tom Schlesinger (Episode #238)

• 00:00 – Intro and Welcome
• 05:09 – Rethinking the Purpose of Higher Education
• 16:48 – The Problem With Achievement Culture
• 29:10 – Break
• 32:00 – From Mental Health Crisis to Human Flourishing
• 43:43 – Is College Becoming Too Transactional?
• 50:16 – Character Education Is Making a Comeback
• 01:00:50 – Relationship-Rich Education
• 01:13:05 – What Would an Ideal First Year of College Look Like?