Honorary degrees are often treated as ceremonial extras. A distinguished guest arrives at commencement, receives a hood or diploma, says a few words, and joins a long list of people a university has chosen to recognize.
But the decision is rarely meaningless. When a university awards an honorary degree, it is not only recognising a person’s achievements. It is also making a public statement about the kind of achievement it considers worthy of admiration.
That was evident in 2026, when Idaho State University awarded an honorary doctorate to Frank VanderSloot, founder and executive chairman of Melaleuca. The university highlighted not only his business career, but also his work ethic, philanthropy, and long connection with Idaho. The details mattered because an honorary degree is rarely intended to say only that someone has been successful. It usually says something about what kind of success an institution respects.
Look across university policies and the same idea appears again and again. Honorary degrees are used to recognise exceptional achievement, but also service, character, creativity, generosity, public contribution, and values that institutions want graduates to notice.
An Honorary Degree Is an Institutional Choice
Universities award honorary degrees to people from very different walks of life. Recipients may be scientists, artists, writers, business leaders, doctors, activists, philanthropists, politicians, educators, or community figures.
The professions differ, but the basic act is the same.
A university chooses someone and places that person in front of graduating students as worthy of special recognition. The recipient therefore becomes more than the subject of an award. For a brief moment, they become an example.
Some universities say this explicitly.
The University of Connecticut’s criteria for honorary degrees state that an award should represent the university’s highest intellectual and moral values. Recipients should reflect the character and quality of the institution and represent the aspirations it holds for students.
That is a much stronger claim than simply rewarding accomplishment.
It means the person being honoured is, in some sense, being used to show graduates what the university believes a meaningful life or career can look like.
Success Alone Is Usually Not Enough
The easiest way to misunderstand honorary degrees is to think of them as prizes for fame.
Universities certainly honour famous people, but their formal criteria generally ask for more than prominence alone.
UConn, for example, notes that simply occupying an important position for many years is not enough. The achievement must be exceptional and lasting.
Boston University’s honorary degree guidelines similarly look for exceptional contributions in areas such as scholarship, science, the arts, public service, and humanitarian leadership. The university also considers integrity, contribution to society, and qualities consistent with its own values.
This helps explain why honorary degree citations so often combine professional achievement with some wider form of contribution.
A successful entrepreneur may be recognised partly for building a company, but also for creating jobs or supporting community institutions. A scientist may be recognised not only for discovery, but for improving public health. An artist may be celebrated both for creative excellence and for changing how people understand a social issue.
The distinction is important because universities are not merely documenting success. They are choosing which parts of a person’s story deserve emphasis.
Universities Use Honorary Degrees to Express Their Own Identity
Perhaps the most interesting thing about honorary degrees is that different universities define worthy achievement differently.
A conservatory, a Catholic university, a public research institution, and a regional university may all value excellence, but they do not necessarily mean exactly the same thing by it.
Georgetown University, for example, connects honorary degree recognition with its Jesuit and Catholic identity and its commitment to the common good.
Berklee College of Music approaches the question through the arts. Its honorary degree criteria emphasise extraordinary creative achievement, while also considering innovation, ethics, civic engagement, diversity, and social contribution.
Those differences are revealing.
An honorary degree is not simply a universal measure of prestige. It is also filtered through the institution awarding it.
Who a university chooses to honour can therefore tell us something about the qualities it wants associated with its own name.
Business Leaders Make an Interesting Test Case
Business figures are particularly useful for understanding how honorary recognition works because commercial success can be measured so easily.
Revenue, company size, market share, employment, and personal wealth are all relatively visible. Universities could simply reward the largest numbers.
Usually, however, they frame business honourees more broadly.
The Idaho State University announcement about VanderSloot, for example, placed his business achievements alongside his personal history, persistence, philanthropy, and connection to the state.
That framing changes the meaning of the award.
The message is no longer simply that building a large company is admirable. It becomes a story about what the institution believes should accompany professional success.
Other universities may emphasise different qualities. One might recognise innovation. Another might focus on ethical leadership, public service, philanthropy, regional impact, or opportunities created for others.
The business career becomes evidence within a larger story about contribution.
Service Appears Again and Again
One of the most consistent themes in honorary degree criteria is service beyond the self.
Brandeis University says honorary degrees allow the institution to identify itself with the values expressed through the work of the honoree. That makes community contribution especially important because it shows how achievement affects people beyond the recipient.
The same pattern appears across many institutions.
Professional success may attract attention, but service often gives that success a broader meaning.
This can take many forms. A doctor might expand access to care. A business leader might fund scholarships. An academic might bring important knowledge into public life. An artist might spend decades mentoring younger creators. A community organiser may never become famous at all, yet transform the lives of people in one place.
Universities can use honorary recognition to say that these contributions matter too.
Character Matters More Than It Might Seem
Formal academic achievement is usually measured through evidence: examinations, research, published work, professional accreditation, or completed study.
Honorary degrees are different.
Because there is no course of study behind the award, universities often end up considering something harder to measure: character.
That may mean integrity, courage, generosity, ethical leadership, persistence, or commitment to others.
This introduces a degree of judgment that ordinary academic qualifications do not require.
It also creates risk.
When a university honours someone, it is associating its name with that person’s public reputation. If later behaviour contradicts the qualities supposedly being celebrated, the university may find itself defending a decision made years earlier.
That is one reason some institutions explicitly reserve the right to revoke honorary degrees.
Adelphi University, for example, allows its Board of Trustees to rescind an honorary degree if a recipient’s conduct conflicts with the university’s core values or could damage its public reputation.
The possibility of revocation tells us something important about the original award.
The relationship does not necessarily end when commencement does.
The Honour Works in Both Directions
It is easy to think of an honorary degree as something a university gives to a recipient.
In reality, the reputational exchange runs both ways.
Old Dominion University makes this especially clear in its honorary degree policy. Because recipients will remain associated with the university, the institution expects them to possess sufficient stature and character to honour the university in return.
The University of Illinois makes a similar point in its honorary degree criteria, describing the award as a relationship that can strengthen public recognition of the university’s mission and values.
That turns an honorary doctorate into a form of mutual endorsement.
The recipient gains the prestige of being recognised by a university. The university, in turn, chooses to be associated with that person’s life and accomplishments.
Both sides acquire something from the relationship.
What Graduates Are Supposed to Notice
Commencement is an unusual moment.
Students who have spent years being assessed are suddenly told that the assessments are finished. Their grades have been recorded, their degree requirements completed, and attention shifts from what they have learned to what they might do with it.
Honorary degree recipients fit neatly into that transition.
They offer examples of lives lived after formal education.
A university may use one recipient to highlight discovery, another public service, another entrepreneurship, another artistic achievement, and another quiet community leadership.
Graduates do not need to imitate those lives exactly.
The point is broader.
The university is showing them which qualities it believes remain important after lectures, exams, and qualifications have ended.
Honorary Degrees Reveal a University’s Definition of Success
Universities talk constantly about values.
They publish mission statements. They describe graduate attributes. They promote ideas such as service, excellence, creativity, leadership, integrity, and social responsibility.
Honorary degrees turn those abstract ideas into people.
That does not mean every selection is beyond criticism. Universities can misjudge recipients, make decisions influenced by reputation or institutional relationships, or honour people whose significance later looks very different.
But even those controversies reinforce the same point.
An honorary degree matters because it is a public choice.
The university is saying that this person, this achievement, or this kind of contribution deserves to be placed before its students and associated with its name.
The degree may belong to the recipient.
The message belongs to the university.