In a meeting on campus a few days ago, along with many of the best and brightest at NDSU, interviewing a candidate for a high position in the university, I asked the question often on my mind these days as a senior dude at our land grant university, the people’s college, as we used to say. Is higher education, college learning, I asked, fundamentally transactional, a matter of contracts and credentials, or is it relational, a matter of mentorships and relationships? I’ll tell you later how that came out.