Closing Remarks for College of Business Administration Commencement

Graduation ceremonies are wonderful events. I’ve witnessed many graduations in over thirty years in the academic world, and perhaps their best feature is that they are always joyous events: everyone is smiling and feeling good, happy and in high spirits. Sometimes, however, it’s difficult to tell who’s happier at graduations: the students who don’t have to study and go to class anymore or the parent of the students who don’t have to pay for their sons and daughters studying at the university. In any case, I’m delighted to speak to an audience whose common denominator is a collective sigh of relief.

I have been asked to say a few words at the close of this ceremony. One of the few things that stands between you and your celebration is my speech. I therefore understand very well that it should be brief.

Usually at this point in a graduation ceremony a person in my position will give you words of wisdom, sage advice for you to follow in your lives after graduation. But if you are awaiting from me this type of speech, you are going to be disappointed. Here I take my cue from William Shakespeare. Is it any coincidence that Polonius, the most noted dispenser of advice in Hamlet and perhaps in all of world literature (famous for his speech that begins: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; and ends “This above all: to thine own self be true”/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou canst not then be false to any man.”); is it any coincidence that Polonius is a deceitful, somewhat senile windbag? I will refrain from dispensing advice, because you don’t need it: you’ve got a solid education behind you and a great degree from an outstanding institution. So you will hear no words of wisdom, maxims, apothegms, pithy sayings, proverbs, parables, adages, aphorisms, mottos, or bon mots on how to conduct yourselves. You’re going to do just fine without my advice.

What I will say to you is that you should be extremely proud of yourselves and of your accomplishments. Significant to me is that you have achieved not only in your departmental programs, but in your general education curriculum. You are not just narrow-minded business majors, who know only accounting, marketing, economics, and finance, but well-rounded, educated students who have also acquired a business degree and are “ready for the world.” You have undergone considerable stress and effort, and today you can finally count yourselves among the educated men and women in our society.

But what does that really mean “to be educated”? How can we tell whether someone has education or doesn’t have it? When I look out upon the graduates today, I see … a lot of young people wearing strange robes and funny hats. Is that what education means? Well, like any scholar worth his salt, I decided that if I didn’t know the answer to this question, it would probably be best to look up some authorities who might have greater insight into these matters than I do. As it turns out, however, among educated men and women there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of respect accorded to education. Albert Einstein, probably the most brilliant physicist of the twentieth century, once quipped that “the only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” Oscar Wilde, the great Irish playwright and essayist, appears to have concurred with Einstein. He wrote: “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” Karl Kraus, a brilliant Austrian essayist from the early twentieth century remarked once: “Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.” Perhaps my favorite citation about matters of education, however, comes from Sidney Smith, the English clergyman, writer, and wit, who once remarked about the Cambridge educated Thomas Macaulay: “He not only overflowed with learning, he stood in the slop.” This deprecation of education on the part of the most eminent writers and thinkers may make some of you wonder why you went through all of this work during the past four years. Was it just to receive a piece of paper? Was it just to be able to call yourself a graduate of the University of Tennessee? Was it just to stand in the slop of learning and knowledge?

I think Einstein, in another mood and more reflective on the essence of education, can help us out here. Ruminating on what it means to study at a great educational institution, he wrote: “It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education . . . is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” Thank you very much, Mr. Einstein. Now I think I have a better idea of the value of your education. It’s not so much what you learned, certainly not so much the facts and the knowledge that others had already gathered, but the ability for each and every one of you to go out and do something that goes beyond what you’ve learned. What I hope we’ve provided for you at UT Knoxville is not a dull and lifeless slop of learning, but the tools to excel outside the university and to find satisfaction in whatever you choose to pursue. “Education,” to cite Einstein one final time, “is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” And I hope that in this sense all of you take pride in calling yourselves educated today.

Education also entails obligations, however. You are going out to be leaders in your communities, in the state, and in the nation, and you will require your education and learning to know what you should and shouldn’t do. You have the heavy obligation that comes from being educated individuals. But you also have one other obligation, and that’s an obligation to the University of Tennessee. As you know, we are a public institution, but we are increasingly reliant on private giving to provide quality education to you and to the generations that will follow in your footsteps.

So take what we’ve given you here, but don’t forget to give back something of what you’ve taken.

Congratulations to all of you on your signal accomplishment. Veritatem cognoscetis et veritas te liberabit. That’s the motto of the University of Tennessee: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

Go Vols!

Posted: May 09, 2008