Interview: Frank Hanna

Education is not simply the transfer of knowledge but the formation of a human soul and its direction toward truth. In today’s educational landscape, however, truth is often treated as a nebulous concept—but not to Frank Hanna, a Catholic-education investor, merchant banker, and CEO of Hanna Capital in Atlanta, Georgia.

To Hanna, truth is not subjective. Its fullness, he argues, has been entrusted to the Catholic Church. As such, if learning is the pursuit of knowledge—and of an understanding of God and His creation—then curricula lacking this ethos will leave the soul wanting and uninformed.

“When I started learning about my faith on my own in law school, I came to the conclusion that a complete education is a Catholic education,” Hanna said. “At the end of the day, education is bringing a person to truth, and so if the Catholic faith is true, then you can’t provide a complete education without it.”

For nearly forty years, this imperative has fueled Hanna’s extensive work strengthening and founding more than a dozen Catholic institutions, from preschools to colleges and universities. Indeed, it is a paramount philanthropic cause in his estimation.

His charitable efforts have earned him wide acclaim—and numerous awards—as well as prominent positions on the boards of various nonprofit organizations and universities, including the chairmanship of a Commission on Education Excellence under President George W. Bush. He has also authored two bestselling books, What Your Money Means: And How To Use It Well (2008) and A Graduate’s Guide to Life: Three Things They Don’t Teach You in College That Could Make All the Difference (2017).

But earthly recognition pales when compared to eternity and the moral obligation that implies. Investing and philanthropy, then, are not merely about laying bricks and mortar—though a tangible educational environment matters—but about elevating souls to God’s glory.

“When you look at an investment, you’re looking at the amount of the dividend you might receive from your investment, and the number of years it might yield return,” Hanna said. “If you form a soul—or help form a soul—the dividend goes forever.”

Several sociological trends have gripped the modern educational landscape, from increased secularism in education and the public square to accelerated inflation in higher education, generations over-saddled with student-loan debt, and even projected demographic cliffs.

Despite these circumstances, Hanna argues that Catholic philanthropy can provide an antidote to the prevailing culture’s malaise—by providing a countercultural model for the holistic formation of students, preparing them for their God-given vocation.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Andrew Fowler: For nearly forty years, you’ve been involved in the Catholic educational landscape. But what motivated you to launch into this passion?

Frank Hanna: It was forty-four years ago. In 1982, as a college sophomore, I had worked on some political campaigns—and I was very interested in politics. But even by the time I was twenty years old, I had figured out that when it came to changing the world through electoral politics, most people had already formed their opinions about the big issues by the time they were voting.

That got me interested in saying, “Well, when are people’s ideas formed?” So I started studying this while I was an undergraduate and realized that voters’ ideas were formed much earlier in life. So when I was going to law school, I decided I’d plan to create a nationwide system of schools. That was my ambition because, I believed, the ones currently existing had not been doing a good job.

Now, I know that sounds incredibly ambitious for somebody who, at the time, was twenty years old, but that’s what I had my sights on. I spent all my spare time researching this topic while I was in law school.

Andrew Fowler: What were some of the issues you identified as problematic in education?

Frank Hanna: In the early 1990s, Christopher Whittle founded the Edison Project, and he even brought in the president of Yale University—Benno C. Schmidt—to help lead it. The effort was a for-profit initiative to ultimately improve schools. They poured millions of dollars into it, but I remember thinking, at the time, “This isn’t going to work.”

What I was seeing on the ground didn’t match the theory behind the Edison project. And, later, polling confirmed this. Most Americans think public schools are a mess—they’ll grade them as a D. But when asked about their own local school, they give it an A or a B.

Why is that? Well, if they give their school a grade of D, they have to do something, right? But they’d rather give their school a grade of A or B because, by the time their kids are in school, their family has become settled in a certain neighborhood and made other choices—and by admitting their school is failing they’d have to do something uncomfortable.

That phenomenon continues today—and the Edison Project collapsed in the early 2000s.

Andrew Fowler: How would you define education, and what are cultural or bureaucratic obstacles to providing a better education for our students, especially in public schools?

Frank Hanna: My favorite definition of education is from Josef Jungmann [1889-1975]—who was an Austrian Jesuit liturgist. He defined education as the process of introducing a person to reality.

Now, there is a great line in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets where he says, “Humankind can only bear so much reality”; so part of the problem in education is that we don’t want to face reality. When I say we don’t want to face reality, I mean, as our society has moved away from religion—not just Catholicism but from many organized religions—people say, “Well, I’m spiritual.” What they really mean is, “I feel a sense of transcendence in me. I acknowledge that. I want to give life to that, but I’d like to do it on my own terms.”

That’s exactly what Adam and Eve said. They said, we love this garden. This is great and really beautiful—but we’d like it on our own terms. That is what our society lives by now. Pope Benedict XVI talked about the dictatorship of relativism. We can speak about freedom, but what we really want is license: to define our reality as we want to define it.

Once you go down the road of denying or defining your own reality, which, as Eliot said, we can only bear so much of, you start to manifest social dysfunction. Our schools ought to at least objectively teach what is good for you—but we moved away from that.

That’s why, during peak wokeness, expecting kids to be able to do math correctly, or even reading Shakespeare, was somehow biased. Yet, if it’s biased, it’s biased toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is biased toward God.

If you celebrate what is evil and deviant, and that’s your truth, then there is no anchor for goodness.

When I was a child, we lived in a more cohesive Judeo-Christian culture, even in public schools, and so there was a more unified understanding of the truths that should be taught. We actually prayed before lunch at my public school.

There are a myriad of problems that affect our schools, but, in the end, they reflect our culture. And today our culture is post-Christendom.

Andrew Fowler: In recent years, it is widely recognized that Catholics have not been properly catechized, such as a belief in Transubstantiation, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center Survey. What credence do you give to those polls, and what do they reflect?

Frank Hanna: I think, among most Catholics, most do believe in the Eucharist. Even the ones who have fallen away forever, they know it’s special—and it’s one of the few things that bring them back.

What many baptized Catholics don’t believe on a daily basis is that they may go to Hell. “How can a just God not have anybody go to Heaven?” “God loves you no matter what, just as you decide to be you.” This has been our dominant Western ethos—it’s the modern Nietzsche: God is dead, and man killed God, because he believes he has no real need for God or atonement.

Most people live with the idea that we will meet Christ at the end—but he’ll understand our lives no matter what we may have done to ourselves or others, since he is total love. But if you believe Jesus, if you believe Jesus was God, that is not what Jesus taught. You only need to read the Gospels to understand that He was constantly seeking to have us repent and change our ways.

We are in a therapeutic culture. We believe no one should feel uncomfortable. The public schools, in effect, are about making everybody feel comfortable. And, too often, colleges are about providing some sort of country-club finishing school for the upper middle class and well-to-do people.

Andrew Fowler: How can education, as a field, be enhanced, especially with various methods of teaching and the rise of new technologies?

Frank Hanna: I’ve been involved with schools that are already established, and particularly involved with new schools because our models have not been significantly updated in the last one hundred years for education. The cost structures are prohibitive—and for Catholic schools, K-12, it’s really hard to provide it for less than $12,000 per child per year if you’re counting all of your costs.

For that reason, I’m interested particularly in new models like hybrids, and I am also encouraging homeschooling.

And I believe we’re going to need to explore the use of artificial intelligence. Now, obviously, you need to ward off dangers. The most important part of education is the formation of a human being, and part of that formation is the transmission of knowledge—about history, English, and math. Not all of that transmission process needs a human being. In fact, I would argue that, for me, at least half of what I’ve learned in the entirety of my life has been from books, with no other human sitting beside me or standing in front of me teaching.

However, we still sit everybody in front of a human being for eight hours and go through a process. It’s very expensive—and, yes, we don’t want kids on screens all the time. But you could theoretically have books and curricula on screens that could go at each individual child’s speed and get more learning accomplished.

Right now, as currently constituted, much of what we do for kids in K-12 is designed to have them feel accepted and popular. That’s not a bad thing. Human beings are supposed to be in groups and loved. So, it’s not a bad motivation—but we can’t submit all the other transcendent things to that.

That’s why, I decided, as someone investing money in philanthropy and charity, what better investment as an investor than the formation of a human soul. Jesus himself told us to store up treasures in Heaven.

Andrew Fowler: We’ve talked significantly about K-12, but what about colleges and universities? What has drawn you into that arena?

Frank Hanna: One reason colleges are intriguing is that they can draw students from all over, not just a thirty-minute drive away; so they can be magnets for spiritual and intellectual fervor. In a certain way, these colleges and universities can be like pilgrimage sites if they’re doing their job well.

Colleges also address students during a period when the human brain is actually undergoing biological changes, and I believe that is often the most effective education which you can impart. Moreover, this is the time when someone is becoming an adult. Unfortunately, today, much of our process leads to an extended adolescence that goes to about thirty.

Andrew Fowler: How has the culture—and lack of true formation—impacted college students? 

Frank Hanna: Some students are going to college to increase their economic earning power. Others, just for a social experience. But, for the former, colleges are losing that argument for a number of people. The data shows that it may not help your earning power, particularly if you go into debt.

To the latter group, children have grown up hearing—from everybody they know and love—that college is the best four years of your life. This thinking has led to so much unhappiness because students are thinking, “I’m not happy every day, but everyone told me this is the best time of my life. What am I doing wrong?” This is what college has become. It’s this place where you go to have the best four years of your life, but it is supposed to be preparing you for seventy years of a good life.

I once met this student who wanted a degree in international business. Why did he pursue that: to have a great lifestyle of the rich and famous. But with that kind of career, it’s very difficult to form friends or get married. You’re constantly moving. Friends and family are the things that matter—but the culture tells our young people the opposite.

The dominant theme of our culture is, you go to college to have a good time and get a job credential. And then you have the next ten years where you’re supposed to have every sensory experience you can have in as many different places as you can have them.

But that is how Catholic colleges have a distinct advantage—we’re actually giving people the preparation they need. And maybe all of these institutions could create curriculums that can be completed in three years, to both limit expenses and help our students begin their adult lives sooner.

Andrew Fowler: What is the status of Catholic colleges and universities?

Frank Hanna: Compared with a generation ago, I believe we have many more vibrant, dynamic, faithful institutions of Catholic higher education. That’s a very encouraging thing, mostly with newer colleges and universities, but there have also been several of our Catholic institutions which have undergone a process of revivification and have become much more clear in their mission. At the end of the day, they’re in the business of forming souls and drawing people closer to God.

There are still Catholic universities which, if you said, “Your main mission to draw people closer to God,” might squirm, and that’s a shame, because it’s actually supposed to be our entire mission here on Earth.

We went through a period when the colleges, a lot of our Catholic colleges and universities during the 60s and 70s, were intentionally distancing themselves from the authority of the Church. Recently, I think we’ve had a reaction against that.

The downside of what’s happened in higher education is that, with the demographic implosion going on right now, there are fewer kids going to college. And when you have a market shrinking, the people who tend to survive that shrinkage are the biggest and wealthiest—and many of our most vibrant Catholic institutions are not among the wealthiest.

Andrew Fowler: So how can philanthropy bolster Catholic institutions? What can schools do to be innovative to meet today’s challenges and reinvigorate culture with a foundation in the transcendentals?

Frank Hanna: We have to be intentional about forming souls. If not, I don’t know why one would be in the business of doing it. But we have to be willing to think in an experimental, innovative manner.

Ultimately, intentionality matters. But I believe we are going to see more specialization with universities. We may actually see colleges not only teach theology but even the trades. We want our professors, lawyers, accountants, and carpenters to be like Jesus, and we want our children to learn how to find their spouses and vocations. We need to prepare people as if they were our own children.

Andrew Fowler is editor at RealClearReligion and communications specialist at the Yankee Institute. Frank Hanna is an investor in entrepreneurial innovation: in the commercial world, in the Church, and in other philanthropic initiatives to promote human flourishing.