People walking around in graduation gowns, having photo shoots on a sunny day and swelling the occasion of graduation onto social media have always unnerved me. At the end of my third year, I’ve finally put my finger on the reason. It’s not because of some premature anxiety about my own post-graduation life. It’s because the ceremony—in the sense of both ritual and pomp—of graduation makes me feel, more than at any other time, that academia is a cult.

Janja Lalich, a sociologist known for her studies about cults, as well as psychologist and cult researcher Michael Langone, executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association, came up with a list of characteristics associated with cultic groups. This list outlines 15 key traits of cults, of which seven surely hold true for academia, while another four also arguably apply. These include but are not limited to: “The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself … ” (modern universities and those educated in them have relied on their supposed claim to enlightenment and refinement to assert their superiority to the supposedly ignorant, uneducated masses), “The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members,” “The group is preoccupied with making money,” “Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.”

So what is it about academia and its function in society that gives it this cultic nature? Well, the institution of education in our society exists primarily for the economic welfare of its members once they leave it. Reduced to its bare bones, it’s analogous to a very complicated and drawn-out sunscreen investment: You buy (or don’t, if you’re not rich enough) a very expensive sunscreen. Then, you spend four years performing tedious forms of labor to apply it. Finally, having applied it (and, with that, having shown that you can perform labor of an equivalent dullness as applying it), you are (considered) hardier than others who didn’t apply it, so you’re entitled to better jobs than them.

But there are a few conditions that must be maintained for this process to occur smoothly. The first is that the sunscreen should be regarded by everyone as being scarce, whether or not it is. Or in the terms of education, knowledge, that which can make you a productive member of society deserving of wages, should be seen as scarce—this makes it possible for it to be commoditized as “an education” and sold.

Second, if the sunscreen is to be regarded as scarce, the best way to do this is to construct a vault, a gatekeeper institution, within which it is confined. With that, in the case of higher education, we have universities.

And third, if the grand farce that people more meaningfully (reward-worthily) contribute to society if they’ve applied a certain kind of sunscreen—and the underlying notion that only tasks that require sunscreen actually are “productive” tasks in society—is to be maintained, elaborate setups and acts of ornateness must inflate this institution with legitimacy, both to itself and to the world. This is why the actual knowledge-creating and disseminating wing of the university, academia, is necessarily infused with a cult-like flavor. And once a year, the cult comes out, wizard-like and performing liturgy, to celebrate itself and the institution of education it serves.

Let’s admit it. It’s only because universities are such an accepted part of our culture that we don’t raise an eyebrow at a few thousand people coming out in gowns and weird hats once a year to be acknowledged as being smart by a few hundred other people in gowns and weird hats.

Graduation is a cult ritual, and demystified, this is what it really amounts to: The knowledge we hold within our confines is sacred and exclusive, as is the act of acquiring it. You, who have paid and worked to acquire it, are now indeed superior members of society: smarter, savvier and thus better deserving of material wealth. Let us pay homage to our institution and the knowledge it holds and what it gives to its members. And to really make people think we’re special, let’s put a mortarboard on our heads for a day.