Enlightening people with culture, is an important subject of ideological and political education in colleges and universities, which affects the effectiveness of ideological and political education from multiple aspects. Based on the complex social and cultural environment, we should make clear provisions on the guidance of“enlightening people with culture”during the ideological and political education in universities. The“culture”, which appears in“enlightening people with culture”, should comprise the scientific theory of Marxism, socialist culture with Chinese characteristics and the beneficial cultural achievements created by other nations. At the same time, we should deeply realize that enlightening people with culture have improved the effectiveness of ideological and political education in the aspects of goal realization, content enrichment and method upgrading. Then, enlightening people with culture should be implemented from the perspective of material culture, spiritual culture, institutional culture and action culture so as to promote and optimize the realization of ideological and political education in universities.