Forget yourself: Learn new things and seek something greater

"Find yourself," college students are told. Bad advice, said Carlos Carvalho, president of the University of Austin in a speech to the Class of 2030. "We’re hoping for something better: that you forget yourself and discover the durable joy of being absorbed in something greater than you."

Narcissus by Caravaggio

The small start-up university doesn't offer a curriculum to "reflect" each student's interests, Carvalho said. It doesn't offer "a self-affirming mirror when what you need is a window."

Students spend the first two years taking core courses on the Great Books and the foundations of Western civilization before specializing. (The recommended summer reading list has 41 books, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and I, Robot, Plutarch's Lives and Walter Isaacson's The Innovators.)

"We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don’t care how they make you feel," he said. "We want you to help your classmate at an inconvenient hour, to listen and learn from the professors, and to find ways to contribute to this young university without demanding that it conform to you."

Students who spend four years not focused on themselves, he promised, "will cross this stage in 2030 strong, free, and surrounded by friends who will help you build a good, virtuous, and successful life."