The living mentor

Higher education institutions today are judged not only by their rankings or research output, but increasingly by how well they nurture the human potential within their gates.

- RAJEEV KUMAR MEHAJAN, PHD, NOBLEGENICS TRUST

In recent years, even India's premier campuses—long celebrated for academic excellence—have witnessed a troubling rise in student suicides and mental health emergencies like, repetitive anxiety, depression, self-harm, panic attacks, hallucinations, severe insomnia, etc. Each such loss or mental breakdown reminds us that formal grievance mechanisms or counselling cells, though essential, cannot substitute for genuine human connection.

What institutions need now is a new kind of leadership—managerial yet humane, structured yet social. This is the premise of what we call the living chief people officer in management language, or simply the living mentor in spirit—a reimagined role that blends strategy with sensitivity and embeds wellbeing, belonging, and growth into the rhythm of campus life.

Why a new role?

Academic management has long drawn from corporate and bureaucratic hierarchies: deans, registrars, and other administrative heads, each with defined silos of authority. The dean of student affairs, for instance, is burdened with duties that leave little time for informal engagement with stakeholders—students. Yet, contemporary campus life demands something more porous and people-centred. Several converging realities make this change urgent:

Campuses as micro-societies: Students, faculty, and staff each face distinct pressures—academic, emotional, and financial. Students arrive with varied expectations, and vulnerabilities, and generally are from highly diverse cultures, ethos and backgrounds; fragmented systems often respond to crises instead of preventing them.

Expanding success metrics: Beyond placements and publications, institutions are now judged by wellbeing, retention, and student experience—across the world, even as part of the metrics in designated formal ranking systems.