I recently heard a great summary of what students want from their college education. David Clayton, senior vice president of research at Strada Education Foundation, summed up some of his data by saying, “students want the promise they can become anything and the certainty they will become something.” In other words, college should be a place for dreams and exploration, but it should also provide a meaningful guarantee of professional level work and a stable lifestyle.

This strikes me as a useful heuristic for thinking about the ways we talk to students and families about the value of higher education. Unlike trade or professional school, the college curriculum requires breadth, creative investigation, and the integration of a wide range of perspectives, content areas, and skills. Unlike self-study or high school, the college curriculum leads to the skills demanded by professional employers, the knowledge needed to entrepreneurially design your career, and the freedom to find meaningful and well-paid work.

Each institution puts this into practice in its own way. For some institutions, the certainty of post-graduate success rests on the institution’s prestige: our name on your diploma guarantees a good job. For others, that certainty is communicated by reference to stellar placement data or by visible college to career pipelines. The promise of exploration might rest on the special requirements of the general education curriculum, unique opportunities for learning beyond the classroom, or the capacities of master teachers and scholars.

Clarity about the ways you make and meet these dual commitments to unbounded intellectual exploration and to bounded career preparation will help you be more persuasive in your messaging and more focused on ensuring you really live up to what you say you offer.

Questions for reflection: How does my institution present the promise of exploration and the certainty of post-graduate success to diverse audiences? Which of these dominate? Do we need a better balance? How do we support vocational exploration and creativity even for deeply career-minded students? How do we demonstrate a commitment to post-graduate career and life success in the midst of so much change in the economy and the future of work?

(Top) CIC State Councils Network CEOs collaborating during their annual conference in Chicago, Illinois; (Bottom) CIC’s Matt Trainum, vice president for networks and strategic partnerships, and the Association of American International Colleges & Universities (AAICU) at Franklin University of Switzerland

I was honored to open the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Seminar at Doane College (NE). The theme was “What Does It Mean to Be Educated?” You can watch my conversation with Doane’s president, Roger Hughes. I argued that the essence of the liberal arts is its liberating power. Its most important role today is to free us from the tyranny of the algorithms that invisibly shape our lives, from the conceptual “isms” of the past century, and from the relentless pressure to value the “more” over the “good.”

Is your college or university a member of CIC? If so, are you making full use of the many benefits that come with membership? Our teams are happy to Zoom with you and some of your colleagues for a personalized tour of membership benefits and how they can help you meet institutional goals, develop campus leaders, apply for grants, and save money. We have made many changes and enhancements over the past three years, so if you haven’t reviewed our offerings lately there are likely benefits you are not yet using. Just email me at president@cic.edu and we will set up a conversation.

CIC is fortunate to have an incredible group of international members and associates. My colleague, Matt Trainum, visited with many of them at the gathering of the Association of American International Colleges & Universities held at CIC member institute Franklin University of Switzerland.

Gathering with the CEOs of the CIC State Councils Network for their annual conference in Chicago was inspirational. This is a strong group of leaders working at the state level on policy, fundraising, and a variety of programs that support independent colleges and universities at the state level.

A Spark of Inspiration

Regular readers know that I am an ardent student of Hannah Arendt and consider her an important guide for understanding her own time and ours. Many of you are likely familiar with her significant theories of the banality of evil and the development of the idea of totalitarianism as a way to explain the similarities between the authoritarian regimes of the right and the left. I have been thinking recently about a lesser-known aspect of her work: her analysis of natality, that is, the fundamental fact that humans are born. Mortality—the fact that we die—is often on our minds. For many of the great minds of the twentieth century—including Arendt’s teacher Martin Heidegger—our awareness of the inevitability of our own death shapes our psyches and our sociality. Death is supposedly the source of our greatest anxieties and the spur to our greatest and most terrible ambitions.

What happens to our thinking if we recognize birth as an equally significant aspect of our being? For Arendt, the fact of birth is the fact of possibility. Each birth brings an entirely new person into our world—one with capacities and potential that we can neither predict or fully control. The human stock is constantly in the midst of change and renewal. When seen as a miraculous and mysterious source of beginning and not as an imperative, natality grounds hope. It also makes intersubjectivity a basic fact and one to which our politics and ethics have to respond.


Moreover, birth reminds of us of our essential interdependence. We die alone—in experience, if not in fact. No one accompanies us on that final journey. But we are born always with at least one other. Birth is inherently relational. From the perspective of our shared condition as birthed beings, the debt we owe to others cannot be ignored. Imagine what we could be and do if our natality were to be made as central to our thinking as our mortality.

Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms

by Johan Roos



A well-researched, thoughtful argument for cultivating the distinctively human capabilities of curiosity, creativity, critical judgement, communication, and collaboration. Roos explains that if we do not learn to use AI in ways that augment and enhance these skills, AI will eventually allow them to atrophy with potentially disastrous results. Drawing on research, the humanities, and his experience as a global business consultant he makes the case for human-centered AI practices and policies. Non-polemical, accessible, and interdisciplinary, this would make a great campus or community read.

Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI

by Nina Beguš

Begǔs reads AI technologies in tandem with the Pygmalion story (and the cross-cultural and cross-temporal sister stories sharing its plot and theme). She argues that technological developments are deeply shaped by the widespread fantasy of an artificial human who is magically brought to life. The book will leave you thinking about our underlying desire for creative power and the ways that technology might better serve us if it aimed at supplementing rather than replicating the human.

Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea

by Shuchen Xiang

Xiang argues that the racism of the west is grounded in an ontology of human hierarchy and competition whose roots go back to the Greeks. In comparison, the Confucius worldview understands human differences as provisional and open to negotiation and influence. There is much here for the historian, the anti-racist scholar, and the sinologist. As a philosopher, I was engaged by the possibilities opened up by this harmonious concept of human difference.

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