An honorary degree appears, at first glance, to be about the person receiving it. A university identifies someone whose work, career, service, or influence deserves recognition, invites them to commencement, and places an academic hood over their shoulders.
But the gesture works in both directions.
When a university gives someone its highest ceremonial honor, it is also choosing to associate itself with that person’s achievements, character, and values. The recipient tells graduates something about the kind of life the institution admires. In that sense, honorary degrees reveal almost as much about universities as they do about the people receiving them.
Some universities make this unusually explicit.
The University of Connecticut’s criteria for honorary degrees say that an award should represent the institution’s highest intellectual and moral values and reflect the character and quality of the university itself. Recipients should also be people whose lives and achievements represent the university’s aspirations for its students.
That turns an honorary degree into something more interesting than a ceremonial prize. It becomes a public statement about what a university thinks success should look like.
Honorary Degrees Are a Form of Institutional Endorsement
Universities award honorary doctorates for many different kinds of achievement. Scientists, artists, writers, business leaders, philanthropists, public servants, activists, educators, and community figures can all receive them.
What matters is rarely professional success alone.
Boston University’s honorary degree guidelines say recipients should have made exceptional contributions in fields such as scholarship, scientific discovery, the arts, public service, or humanitarian leadership. They should also have contributed to the betterment of society and reflect the integrity and virtues the university values.
Brandeis University goes further. It says honorary degrees allow the university to identify itself with the values expressed through the work of the honoree, while drawing attention to the institution’s own mission and purposes.
That is an unusually clear description of what is really happening.
The university is not simply saying, “This person has accomplished something impressive.”
It is also saying, “This is an accomplishment, contribution, or way of living that we believe deserves admiration.
Achievement Alone Is Usually Not Enough
Fame can make someone an obvious commencement attraction, but universities generally describe much higher standards in their formal policies.
UConn, for example, says merely holding a senior position for many years is not sufficient. Honorary recognition should reflect extraordinary and lasting distinction.
At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, potential recipients can be recognized for scholarship, creative achievement, professional distinction, public service, or excellence in a profession that has visibly contributed to society.
The common thread is contribution.
A successful career may provide evidence of achievement, but universities frequently look beyond the size of a company, the number of books sold, the offices held, or the awards already collected. They also consider what the person did with that success and why it matters to other people.
That helps explain why philanthropy, public service, community leadership, and humanitarian work feature so frequently in honorary degree citations.
The distinction matters because universities are educational institutions. The people they honor are often being placed in front of students at the exact moment those students are leaving university and beginning the next stage of their lives.
A recipient therefore becomes, at least temporarily, an example.
Different Universities Honor Different Ideals
The basic idea of rewarding exceptional achievement is widespread, but the criteria can become much more revealing when individual institutions describe what achievement means to them.
Georgetown University, for example, says an honorary degree candidate may be someone whose life or work represents the highest values of the university’s Jesuit and Catholic identity and its mission to advance the common good.
Berklee College of Music approaches the question through a very different institutional lens. Its honorary degree criteria focus on extraordinary achievement in music and the arts, but they also emphasize innovation, ethics, civic engagement, diversity, and contributions to society.
Neither approach is surprising. That is precisely the point.
An honorary doctorate from a conservatory should reflect a somewhat different idea of accomplishment from one awarded by a Jesuit university, a research institution, or a regional public university.
The choices help describe the institution.
They show what kinds of achievement it wants students to notice, what qualities it considers exemplary, and which parts of its own mission it considers important enough to personify.
When Business Achievement Becomes Academic Recognition
Business leaders are frequently included among honorary degree recipients, but the strongest cases tend to involve more than commercial success.
In 2026, Idaho State University awarded an honorary doctorate to Melaleuca founder and executive chairman Frank VanderSloot.
The university’s account of the award did not focus solely on the size of the business he built. It also emphasized his work ethic, his personal history, philanthropy, and his connection with Idaho.
That framing is significant.
Universities are perfectly capable of recognizing someone simply for exceptional professional achievement, but commencement honors often tell a broader story. Business becomes part of that story when it illustrates characteristics the institution wants to place before its graduates: persistence, leadership, service, generosity, innovation, or contribution to a community.
The same principle applies outside business.
UConn Law, for example, awarded an honorary degree in 2026 to Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. The university described his work in terms of justice, human dignity, and using legal education in service of others.
The professions differ enormously. The underlying institutional act does not.
In each case, the university is choosing qualities it considers worth celebrating.
The Relationship Works Both Ways
There is another reason universities take these decisions seriously: once the degree is awarded, the recipient becomes part of the institution’s public history.
Old Dominion University puts this plainly in its honorary degree policy. Because recipients will be forever associated with the university, it says, they should possess sufficient stature and character to honor the institution in return.
The University of Illinois describes the award in similarly reciprocal terms. Giving an honorary degree, its guidelines say, creates a relationship between the university and the recipient while strengthening public recognition of the university’s mission and values through that association.
That makes honorary degrees different from many other awards.
A prize can recognize a particular achievement and end there. An honorary degree attaches an institution’s name to a person.
Universities therefore have a reputational interest in choosing carefully.
What Happens When an Honor Ages Badly?
The strength of that association also explains why some universities have procedures for taking honorary degrees back.
Boston University allows honorary degrees to be revoked in extraordinary circumstances if later information undermines the achievements for which someone was recognized or if the recipient’s conduct creates serious conflict with the university’s mission, values, or reputation.
Adelphi University has a similar policy. Its Board of Trustees may rescind an honorary degree if a recipient’s conduct is contrary to the university’s core values or could reasonably damage its public reputation.
The possibility of revocation tells us something important about the original award.
If an honorary doctorate were simply a ceremonial congratulations for past achievement, later behavior would matter much less.
But universities treat these honors as continuing associations.
That makes the original decision partly a judgment of character, and occasionally a risky one.
Institutions cannot know how every recipient will behave in the future. Nor will everyone agree about which accomplishments deserve admiration in the first place. The symbolic power of honorary degrees is exactly what makes some selections controversial.
The award says something, whether the university intends every possible interpretation or not.
What Graduates Are Supposed to See
Commencement is a peculiar moment in university life.
Students who have spent years being assessed are suddenly being told that the assessments are over. The grades have been recorded, the requirements have been completed, and attention turns toward what they might do next.
Honorary degree recipients fit naturally into that transition.
Their presence offers one possible answer to a question universities cannot resolve through coursework alone: what should someone actually do with an education, a career, or an opportunity?
Different institutions answer differently.
One might emphasize intellectual discovery. Another may celebrate artistic innovation, entrepreneurship, public service, justice, generosity, or leadership. Most combine several of these qualities.
What matters is that the choice is rarely meaningless.
The person standing on the commencement stage has been selected partly because the university believes something about their life is worth showing to the people about to leave it.
Honorary Degrees Tell Us Who Universities Admire
A university’s values can be found in mission statements, strategic plans, speeches, and prospectuses. Honorary degrees offer a rather more human version.
Instead of describing qualities such as service, excellence, courage, creativity, generosity, or integrity in the abstract, the university attaches those ideas to a person.
Sometimes the connection is obvious. Sometimes it is debatable. Occasionally, with the benefit of hindsight, it proves uncomfortable.
But the underlying message remains.
An honorary degree does not simply ask whether someone has been successful.
It asks what kind of success a university believes deserves its name.