Kathleen Fitzpatrick is talking about institutions of higher education but the idea of these words has resonance for some other things happening in the news lately with which you might be familiar.

The executive management teams at our colleges and universities have been charged with their institutions’ survival. I understand that. But we need to consider carefully what the institutions are for if not for the people who learn in them, the people who teach in them, the people who build them and keep them operational. The relationship between institutions and those people is the entirety of the institution’s value, and if the lives of those people do not come first, the institution should not survive.