To cultivate humanity is to invest in, enrich, or elevate all that it is to be human. But cultivating humanity has become a pressing challenge in higher education, because learning about what it means to be human depends on significant and ongoing personal engagement of students with faculty and staff who serve as mentors, advisors, and guides. Such engagement is as expensive as it is essential; time and people are money. It should not be true that there is enough time and enough faculty and staff to cultivate humanity only in colleges and universities that have a lot of money. What students most need, and what cultivating humanity most requires, is the hardest thing for institutions of higher education to provide, and for observers and stakeholders of colleges and universities to understand and support. But what students learn about themselves, others, and the world around them is as important to their future success as getting the degree. Character, empathy, and moral principles make the graduate a whole person, not just an individual with a credential. Colleges and universities must settle for nothing less.

I

What we mean by “humanity” — when we refer to certain qualities of a person, rather than the collective mass of human beings — brings together benevolence, compassion, empathy, and kindness, all of which are elements of character that evoke caring. To have humanity is to be humane, to care, to notice and respond to others thoughtfully and with kindness. Those words — humane and humanity, each with the word “human” embedded within — link traits of caring for and about others to the very foundation of what it means to be human. To be humane and demonstrate humanity, a creature must first be human. To cultivate humanity is to nurture growth in — to invest in, enrich, or elevate — all that it is to be human.

Colleges and universities, given consideration of their missions and purposes, are quite well placed and prepared to do exactly that: to study, invest in, and elevate what it is to be human. Libraries, whether traditional or digital in form and function, archive centuries of expressions of human stories, thought, and imagination. On many campuses, galleries, museums, and performance spaces display or bring to life the artistry, creativity, and virtuosity of people across centuries, geographies, and cultures. Academic disciplines and programs, courses, and learning experiences in and out of the classroom (and on and off campus) broaden students’ perspective, amplify or challenge their worldview, and encourage their intellectual, personal, and social growth and development. Student learning outcomes at any level, from the institution as a whole to specific course assignments and experiential learning activities, often emphasize self-knowledge, interpersonal relationships, cultural competency, and civic engagement. In those conditions, we would reasonably expect attention to what it means to be human, and therefore the cultivation of humanity, to thrive and flourish. Variations in institutional type, purpose, and resources — and the presence of multiple, complex demands on students’ time that limit their presence or engagement on campus — might influence the breadth and depth of those explorations. But any institution of higher education devoted to higher learning (and therefore worthy of the name college or university) engages students in thinking about what it means to be human in one way or another.

Nonetheless, cultivating humanity has become a pressing challenge in higher education, and for more pervasive reasons than the much-discussed “decline of the humanities.” In the first place, there is more to humanity than “the humanities”; since humanity crosses disciplines and majors, it arises among scientists and engineers, not just writers and historians. The “decline of the humanities” needs not signal the “decline of humanity.” But the critical problem is broader: the academy’s ability to engage students in discerning what it means to be human, and to draw them into understanding how learning about being human influences attitudes and life choices, has been seriously diminished and eroded. That loss is not only, or even primarily, a result of either the “decline of the humanities” or the contemporary emphasis on what has come to be regarded as an essential instrumental function of higher education — preparing students for a job.

A “job,” in this case, really means vocational and economic success, as defined by metrics that privilege post-graduation income levels and desirable (short) intervals between career milestones. It is true that fewer students are majoring in the humanities, and concerns about eventual employability and compensation have fueled that trend. Hence, the “decline of the humanities” and the elevated priority of preparation for a job are different expressions of the same thing. The compression of the American middle class has inspired high levels of anxiety among many students and their parents that push toward majors in fields thought to be more lucrative and less likely to bring new graduates back home to live with their parents. The aspiration of many students from traditionally under-represented, under-privileged, or marginalized groups to achieve social mobility can influence their selection of colleges, majors, and courses; perceived career advantages to business or STEM areas, regardless of evidence to the contrary, may guide them, like many other students, away from humanities or other similar options. Cynical reassessments of the value of the liberal arts — and critiques of the terms “liberal arts” and “liberal education” themselves — reflect complex fears among members of a deeply divided public that questions the assumptions, methods, values, and outcomes of higher education.

But offering students a deeper understanding of what it means to be human, and thereby working to cultivate humanity among them, is more substantively and painfully challenged by forces that have weakened true higher learning in higher education. The neoliberal assumption that higher education is (and should be) a private advantage, not a public good, has fueled regressive declines in state funding of public colleges and universities and supported the imposition of funding models that privilege deceptively simple measurements that can easily be assembled onto “dashboards” and depend upon those metrics to determine funding levels. The business model of private liberal arts colleges (whether or not they are “elite”) increasingly depends on their enrolling and retaining larger proportions of students from well-to-do families who do not require financial aid, despite increasing competition for those students and the critical need to strengthen educational vitality through diversity across the full spectrum of America’s demographic and socioeconomic differences. Fiscal and competitive pressures — notably the pervasive, unproductive, and anti-intellectual priority given to comparative rankings — have driven colleges and universities to adopt cost-cutting or resource-conserving measures that take little account of what students need to learn about being human or the ways in which that learning might happen.

II

Learning about what it means to be human depends above all else on significant, substantial, and ongoing personal engagement of students with faculty and staff who serve as mentors, advisors, and guides; learning about being human requires time with, and investments by, more seasoned humans. Such engagement is as expensive as it is essential. Time and people — especially full-time faculty and staff — are money. But reduced public funding, and stress on the fragile revenue models of many private colleges and universities, have limited students’ access to both. Constrained budgets translate quickly into higher tuition and fees and lower numbers of full-time faculty and staff (often achieved through coyly named processes like “right-sizing”). Higher tuition just as quickly reduces access, creates greater indebtedness among graduates (which limits career options) and reduces persistence and retention. Efforts to adapt to, delay, or prevent those consequences generate their own problems; hiring more part-time or contingent faculty undermines students’ formal and informal access to mentoring, advising, and intellectual apprenticeship, and eliminating what are regarded as underperforming academic programs (and, often, the faculty who teach in them) weakens academic communities, reduces the capacity for interdisciplinary innovation, and substitutes short-term “solutions” for true academic and institutional strategy. Reductions in student-facing staff (e.g., in residence halls, student activities, or health and wellbeing programs and services) disable key connections between students and caring professionals. Moments of connection and inspiration between students and professors and staff members decline in frequency and vibrancy; as workloads and demands increase, the priority (even the possibility) of a longer or subsequent conversation with a curious or distressed student declines. As those circumstances become routine, students begin to see administrators as insensitive, uncaring robots, and administrators start thinking of students as nameless numbers represented on balance sheets. A grittier, more abrasive edge sharpens disputes between faculty or staff and “the administration,” which is addressed with less and less recognition of the fact that it is composed of human beings, some of whom were, prior to “going to the dark side,” faculty or staff members themselves. Small grievances escalate; advocacy for random acts of kindness becomes increasingly necessary. Nobody wins, and humanity loses.

We should not let it be true, as it is today, that there is enough time and there are enough faculty and staff to cultivate humanity only in colleges and universities that have a lot of money — large endowments with predictable investment income that supplements tuition revenues, high proportions of full-pay students, and levels of philanthropic support that enable them to provide generous financial aid to other students. Those circumstances, positive though they may be in many ways (consider the alternative), raise another set of questions about the probability of the cultivation of humanity as well; deep socioeconomic divides on campus can, but may not, co-exist with equity in other spheres. Caring about students and their learning, growth, and well-being should not be subject to fluctuations in the relative effectiveness of institutions as businesses. There is a difference between being effective as a business, as understood in usual operational and financial terms, and exercising appropriate diligence and stewardship of resources in the service of mission, as should be expected of any non-for-profit organization. Institutions of higher learning are not chartered as businesses, regardless of their need to be fiscally sustainable; whether their governance is public or private, they are obligated as a matter of their tax-exempt status and their fidelity to the public’s trust first and foremost to educate students. Yes, students can learn in other settings — in institutions that are in fact chartered as businesses. It is not clear, or predictable, however, that students’ experience in those settings includes the extended time and attention required to cultivate their humanity.

It is in the critical difference between two very different priorities — being effective as a business, and exercising appropriate and diligent stewardship of resources in the interest of educating students — that colleges and universities can easily drift away, or be pulled away, from their mission. Presidents and chancellors, members of governing boards, faculty and staff, alumni, parents, legislators and other public officials, and all of us, as a society with certain characteristics, values, and culture, may contribute, actively or passively, to those outcomes. Historians argue that American culture has always had an anti-intellectual theme; nonetheless, the visibility and intensity of suspicion, doubt, and denigration of thought, science, and evidence have reached remarkable levels in this new century. There is little tolerance for complexity in analysis and little patience for careful reflection. Thinking takes time, and the life of the mind seems impractical and ungrounded; beliefs, whether or not chastened by facts, have standing and gain privilege. Lists of “bullets” and executive summaries triumph over “long reads,” which are regarded as pointless, tedious luxuries. Colleges and universities, as places that do, or should, harbor serious thought and employ serious thinkers, may be seen as expensive cost centers that take too long to do too little. Many institutions of higher education, thereby becoming complicit in their own diminution, have developed and trumpeted degree programs that are shorter, faster, cheaper, much more convenient — and easier. Faster, cheaper, and easier leaves little space for the kinds of interactions that enable students to open themselves to transformative experiences and explore what it means to be human. Perhaps that is not what students in those programs came for; fair enough, but it is also not clear that what they are getting is what the institutions that teach them were chartered to provide. Higher learning is not simply the acquisition of a credential, and a degree is not a deliverable. To understand an academic credential as a deliverable — purchased by tuition and provided in return for the accumulation of a required number of credit hours — is to see higher education not only as a business, but as a consumer service; it turns a degree from something earned and commodifies it into a product.

Anti-intellectual attitudes in our culture weaken the perceived value of higher learning, and therefore of colleges and universities; cynical views of, and a loss of trust in, institutions in general (examples: health care organizations, and physicians in particular; government and elected officials; banks; science and scientists; news media; etc.) complicate that problem. Demands for greater accountability, from performance-based funding and freezes in tuition and fees to legislative intrusions in institutional (including academic) policy, have not only compromised institutional flexibility, but also focused attention too narrowly on the “dashboard” indicators noted earlier. The desire for competitive prominence, higher rankings, and greater success in recruiting, enrolling, retaining, and graduating students has added more distractions from mission; the primacy of enrollment management, which promises “more,” has replaced the primacy of the academic mission on too many campuses. Enrollment, which generates tuition revenue, brings money, while great academic outcomes more likely cost money. And “more” rarely refers to learning; it only applies to numbers of students. Business success is easier to measure (and, painfully, perhaps more desirable) than educational effectiveness. Accordingly, public universities — including even world-class flagships — increasingly depend, as their private peers always have, on philanthropy and grants and contracts to support a broader spectrum of academic innovations, new or better facilities, and research and scholarly activities. Governing boards and administrators of public institutions who want better to support students in true higher learning about their own humanity (which, again, means time and people) can only very rarely expect support from state legislatures and other elected officials.

There are other distractions. Often because of the outsized influence of groups of trustees or alumni, competitive intercollegiate athletics programs may distort the priorities of universities. On many campuses, intercollegiate athletics functions as its own businesswithin-a-business — though it is seldom subject to the same risks and demands as other businesses. Few of those programs actually make money; most depend on institutional support. Corruption in athletics programs — in the news so frequently as to blunt the impact of new revelations — further undermines both trust and mission. The differential treatment of student-athletes, making them athletes first and students second, highlights the effects of a culture that ranks athletic prowess well ahead of intellectual achievement, usually to the considerable detriment of student-athletes themselves. The monetization of college athletics reflects social, as well as institutional, values; investments in winning, and in the staff positions, facilities, media contracts, and equipment required to win more often and more visibly, seem far easier to justify than investments in the people and time required to enrich higher learning and cultivate humanity.

III

Living, socializing, and doing projects with peers satisfies some needs for community and connection, but cannot sufficiently help students understand or challenge their own perspectives. The rough edges of peer conversations and the aggressive (often abusive) “calling out” of others whose views, statements, or behaviors are taken to be unacceptable within some specific frame of reference call for greater empathy and for the development of a caring perspective. An assumption of good intentions that stands until something proves otherwise seldom prevails. Strident disputes among faculty — especially in the wild world of listserv interactions — set a poor example for students who seek a less toxic culture. Among undergraduates, the lack of a sense of belonging is a major reason for dissatisfaction with, disillusionment about, and departure from school; perhaps a more caring campus culture, a more tolerant, accepting, and benevolent atmosphere, and a more empathic view of others and their lives (especially when reciprocated) would make feeling that one belongs more likely. In a more humane and supportive environment, fewer students might require professional assistance from mental health professionals. Oddly, perhaps, such a “soft,” human intervention might have powerful business consequences.

If higher education has moved too far from higher learning, then — and from investing its most precious and limited resources (time and people) in students and reduced its capacity to cultivate humanity — it has done so in the crucible of culture. Colleges and universities have surrendered too much of their capacity to elevate humanity in a social context and environment that have restricted their degrees of freedom, forced them to operate almost purely as independent businesses, provided less and less recognition and support, and diluted their allegiance to mission. No doubt many leaders in higher education today wish there had been better options and regret some of the actions they have had to take in the service of public, cultural, and social expectations. Those factors, however, do not absolve the leaders and governing boards of colleges and universities of their fundamental responsibility for uncompromising stewardship of their institution’s mission, conscientious discharge of the public trust, or full accountability for decisions made and directions taken in response to misplaced priorities. The cost of those decisions, in human and educational terms, has been, and remains, substantial. Students whose contact with professors, professional staff, advisors, and other mentors is primarily or exclusively transactional and circumstantial are denied one of the most fundamental and valuable benefits of higher education: higher learning, which, in its transformative essence, could have taken them more deeply into the meaning of their own lives and those of others. When time with faculty or staff — meetings, discussions, shared experiences — exceeds the limited expectations of mere transactions, it is an investment in students; those investments are what matters most about higher learning  Getting a job also matters, but students whose college experience nets them only that have missed the point of higher education.

Were — are — other decisions possible? Could — can — colleges and universities preserve, or regain, the capacity (time and people) to invest in students’ learning and cultivate their humanity? Yes. But what students most need, and what cultivating humanity most requires, is, currently, the hardest thing for institutions of higher education to give, and for observers and stakeholders of colleges and universities to understand and support. Slogans, campaigns, internet memes, and social media blitzes will not provide what students need: time to think, talk, learn, and reflect, and the ability to share themselves and their ideas and views with caring people who welcome them, and whose knowledge, experience, and wisdom are made accessible to them. Climbing walls,”lazy rivers,” nicer residence halls, and even winning athletic teams are not enough. Character is not built mechanically or accidentally; it takes focus, feedback, work. Empathy does not arise through prescription; it must be nurtured and tested. Colleges and universities should monitor students’ progress, identify and resolve, as much as possible, barriers of any kind that impede their progress, and work as hard as they can to be sure that students persist and graduate; only after graduation can they experience the full social and economic benefits of higher education. But what students learn about themselves, others, and the world around them is as important to their future success as getting the degree. Character, ethics, empathy, beneficence, and moral principles — humanity — make the graduate a whole person, not just an individual with a credential. Colleges and universities, to fulfill the promises of their mission, must settle for nothing less, and all of their decisions should align with a commitment to cultivate humanity.