Quotes & Sayings About Graduates

Like us, many students had spent their years in college thinking they'd get that well-paying, planet-saving job, even if they'd heard horror stories from recent underemployed grads. Those jobs, of course, no longer exist (if they ever did). By 2009, 17.4 million college graduates had jobs that didn't even require a degree. There are 365,000 cashiers and 318,000 waiters and waitresses in America who have bachelor's degrees, as do one-fifth of those working in the retail industry. More than 100,000 college graduates are janitors and 18,000 push carts. (There are 5,057 janitors in the United States who have doctorates and professional degrees!) — Ken Ilgunas

I had a major in business, and I graduated with a business degree, but I was perhaps the worst student to graduate from that program. — William Shatner

It is very common ... to tell graduates: dream and dream big. I say do more than that. When you dream you are in an unconscious state. It ends. You wake up. It's not real. — Roger Goodell

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. — George Eliot

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. — Arsene Wenger

[A]s a graduate student at Columbia University, I remember the a priori derision of my distinguished stratigraphy professor toward a visiting Australian drifter [a supporter of the theory of continental drift]. [ ... ] Today [ ... ] my own students would dismiss with even more derision anyone who denied the evident truth of continental drift a prophetic madman is at least amusing; a superannuated fuddy-duddy is merely pitiful. — Stephen Jay Gould

Just the example Delaware State University graduates set by the way they live their lives, should be an inspiration to other high school students to go to Delaware State. — Michael N. Castle

if college graduates can no longer be counted on to lead reasoned debate and discussion in American life, and to know the difference between knowledge and feeling, then we're indeed in the kind of deep trouble no expert can fix. — Thomas M. Nichols

When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where despite the recent proliferation of courses on 'happiness' and 'positive psychology,' the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of *critical* thinking, and critical thinking is inherently skeptical. The best students
and in good colleges, also the most successful
are the ones who raise sharp questions, even at the risk of making a professor momentarily uncomfortable. Whether the subject is literature or engineering, graduates should be capable of challenging authority figures, going against the views of their classmates, and defending novel points of view. — Barbara Ehrenreich

If America's universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. — Anonymous

The 'Cheetah Generation' refers to the new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals, who look at African issues and problems from a totally different and unique perspective. — George Ayittey

But just because a person goes to Harvard doesn't mean he's balanced when he graduates, and just because a dog knows how to obey doesn't mean he's balanced, either. — Cesar Millan

I've had this unbelievable amount of good fortune and I'm just so thankful for it. But at the same time I feel exceptionally guilty. I have so many friends who are talented graduates of Juilliard and are exceptional actors and I'm the lucky one that somehow got such a fortunate break. — Matthew Gray Gubler

Some go on to trade schools or get further training for jobs they are interested in. Some go into the arts, some are craftsmen, some take a little time out to travel, and some start their own businesses. But our graduates find and work at what they want to do. — Daniel Greenberg

We are specifically keeping the best and brightest out. It is the dumb and dumbest that we are letting in. Let me rephrase that: It is the ill-educated and the uneducated that we are letting in. The VCs, college graduates, PhDs, you name it, from all over the world, they are limited. The number of people of that caliber - severely limited and tightly controlled. — Rush Limbaugh

Nor did it go unnoticed by the latest litter of Archimboldians, recent graduates, boys and girls, their doctorates tucked still warm under their arms, who planned, by any means necessary, to impose their particular readings of Archimboldi, like missionaries ready to instill faith in God, even if to do so meant signing a pact with the devil, for most were what you might call rationalists, not in the philosophical sense but in the pejorative literal sense, denoting people less interested in literature than in literary criticism, the one field, according to them - some of them, anyway - where revolution was still possible, and in some way they behaved not like youths but like nouveaux youths, in the sense that there are the rich and the nouveaux riches, all of them generally rational thinkers, let us repeat, although often incapable of telling their asses from their elbows, — Roberto Bolano

Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that's not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts. — Michael Hudson

Up until 1900, more than half the graduates from women's colleges remained single, many of them carving out careers in new fields such as social work. — Stephanie Coontz

I want to be able to pick up a list of names of graduates from high schools and colleges in the city and to see that that list is longer than it was when I started in 2009. — Julian Castro

Jesus called fishermen, not graduates of rabbinical schools. The main requirement was to be natural and sincere. — Jim Cymbala

College graduates work in every sector of the American economy, and the research engines incubated within our universities generate a wealth of ideas and innovations that have an enormous impact on our lives. — Gordon Gee

You never graduate from the school of discipleship. — Howard G. Hendricks

Education is something that should not be organized on a for-profit basis, because in that case its purpose is not really to provide an education. It's not to teach students how to get better work, but how to provide banks with a free giveaway opportunity from the government, by making junk loans that are defaulted on. The effect may be to wreck the futures of the graduates that fall for the false promises that are being made. — Michael Hudson

Life is my university, and I hope to graduate from it with some distinction. — Louisa May Alcott

My main objective is to prepare candidates for professional baseball; however, the majority of our graduates will go home as much better qualified amateurs. — Jim Evans

I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates. — Geoffrey Canada

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college. — Michael Bloomberg

Miss Ellis?" Mrs. Perterson says. "It's your turn. Introduce Alex to the class"
"This is Alejandro Fuentes. When he wasn't hanging out on street corners and harrassing innocent people this summer, he toured the inside of jails around the city, if you know what i mean. His secret desire is to go to college and become a chemistry teacher, like you Mrs. Peterson."
Brittney flashed me a triumpnet smile, thinking she won this round. Guess again, gringa. "This is Brittney Ellis," I say, all eyes focused on me. "This summer she went to the mall, bought new clothes to extend her wardrobe, and spent her daddy's money on plastic surgery to enhance her, ahem, assets. Her secret desire is to date a Mexicano before she graduates."
Game on ... — Simone Elkeles

We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. — Natalie Goldberg

The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "The Revenge of Failure". This is what Envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well, we will destroy the canons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we are not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! we will strum a guitar all day, and call it self-expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased,and failure has had its revenge. — Henry Fairlie

Teach For China recruits top American and Chinese college graduates, like 26-year-old Yang Xiao, to teach in the country's most disadvantaged schools. — Wendy Kopp

The importance of reading on the part of freedom loving people cannot be underestimated. Well-read people are able to think through issues better than non-readers are. Those who are well read will be able to become leaders in society. Non-readers are often doomed to be nothing more than followers. The dumbed-down graduates of the government schools are unable to think through the issues of day let alone even know what the issues are. They fall prey to specious arguments and deceptive manipulative politicians who promise anything to achieve an agenda or to stay in power. — Jack Kettler

Maybe everyone is a little too reassuring that things are going to be OK to college graduates. It gives them a false sort of security. — Peter Dinklage

He was defiantly narrow-minded, barely educated, and at least close to functionally illiterate. His beliefs were powerful but consistently dubious, and made him seem, in the words of The New Yorker, "mildly unbalanced." He did not like bankers, doctors, liquor, tobacco, idleness of any sort, pasteurized milk, Wall Street, overweight people, war, books or reading, J. P. Morgan and Co., capital punishment, tall buildings, college graduates, Roman Catholics, or Jews. Especially he didn't like Jews. Once he hired a Hebraic scholar to translate the Talmud in a manner designed to make Jewish people appear shifty and avaricious. — Bill Bryson

The modern school without systematic lectures turns out many graduates who lack retention. No sooner has the sound of the word left their teacher's lips, the subject has been forgotten. — Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind. — Elizabeth Lesser

Earlier today, Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized the California school system, calling it disastrous. Arnold says California's schools are so bad that its graduates are willing to vote for me. — Conan O'Brien

He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds. — Thucydides

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement. — Charles Darwin

Failing to graduate a populace that values reading has long-term consequences for everyone. — Donalyn Miller

Bagehot did what so many thousand of young graduates before him had done,
he studied for the bar; and then, having prepared himself to practise law, followed another large body of young men in deciding to abandon it. — Woodrow Wilson

For me specifically, it was important to graduate. In my family, I was one of the first graduates. My mom did not have a college degree. My dad did not have a college degree. — Brian Acton

America's a hard school, I know, but hard schools make excellent graduates. — Oriana Fallaci

How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away. — Yuval Noah Harari

For the next approximately three years, I have got Nathan to take care of. I know that once he graduates from high school, he will be off doing whatever it is he is going to be doing - probably playing ice hockey. — Barbara Mandrell

I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university. — John Keegan

Certification programs for social media are blossoming as a response to the demand for more social media training. Both industry professionals and recent graduates are tapping into tactical training programs to help them stay up to date as the industry grows. — Ryan Holmes

No one knew much about the Twenty-Eighth Infantry. It was not a glamour outfit.
They knew about the Big Red One and the Screaming Eagles, about the Eighty-Second Airborne and Hell On Wheels, but not about Twenty-Eighth Infantry. The name was met with a certain silence, as if he was in a room full of Harvard graduates and told them his degree was by correspondence. — Miles Watson

I often hear from new graduates that it's better to wait until you have more experience ... But I'm a big believer in the power of inexperience ... The world needs you before you stop asking naive questions and while you have the time to understand the true nature of the complex problems we face and take them on. — Wendy Kopp

Sanders had fought the B-school mentality that she exemplified. After watching these graduates come and go, Sanders had finally concluded that there was a fundamental flaw in their education. They had been trained to believe that they were equipped to manage anything. But there was no such thing as general managerial skill and tools. — Michael Crichton

I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write. — Derek Bok

As the graduates were called to the stage to collect their diplomas, I shook every hand. Many stopped to give me a hug. One young woman even told me I was "the baddest bitch" (which, having checked with someone later, actually did turn out to be a compliment). — Sheryl Sandberg

So is there anything intrinsically wrong with the fact that 25 percent of employed Yale graduates end up in this industry? Yeah. I think so. Of course this is my own opinion, but to me there's something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we're not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we're explicitly passionate about. Even if it's just for two or three years. That's a lot of years! And these aren't just years. This is twenty-three and twenty-four and twenty-five. If it were a smaller percentage of people, perhaps it wouldn't bother me so much. But it's not. — Marina Keegan

But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We're not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn't try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it. — Shauna Niequist

The important thing is to learn from mistakes - something graduates are adept at. Our graduate engineers are working on new technology - from uncharted applications for our digital motor, to a new take on the hand dryer. With an unhindered mind, nothing is off limits. — James Dyson

The Christian life is a school of love and nobody graduates from it before the end of his life. — Sunday Adelaja

When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped. — Stephen Vincent Benet

Graduates, your values matter. They are your north star. And work takes on new meaning when you feel you're pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just a job. And life is too short for that. — Tim Cook

20. The day she graduated from college, Keegan told her mother that she was especially proud of her Yale Daily News article "Even Artichokes Have Doubts," which went on to be adapted for the New York Times and discussed on NPR. When The Opposite of Loneliness was first published in April 2014, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, "Keegan was right to prod us all to reflect on what we seek from life, to ask these questions, to recognize the importance of passions as well as paychecks - even if there are no easy answers." As Keegan reminds other young people that "we can do something really cool to this world" (p. 200), what points does she emphasize? What counterarguments might she have considered more specifically? Do you share her concern about where so many top young graduates take their first jobs? Do you worry that you need to compromise your own dreams for practical concerns? Why or why not? — Marina Keegan

There are stories - legends, really - of the "steady job." Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the business cycle. ... The graduates snicker. A steady job! They've never heard of such a thing. — Max Barry

By the time these students enter the workforce, many of the jobs they will apply for ill be in industries that don't even exist yet. That's a hard future to prepare someone for. Teachers have their sights set on the real goal: not to produce Ivy League graduates, but to encourage the development of naturally curious, confident, flexible, and happy learners who are ready for whatever the future has in store. — Taylor Mali

After we graduate tonight, we no longer have to let society happen to us. We get to create our own. — Rachel Maddow

The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet. — Phyllis McGinley

As far as YU faculty and students are concerned, the love for Israel is very strong. Probably about three thousand of our graduates have settled in Israel. On average, every year 650 male and female students study in Israel for a minimum of one year. — Norman Lamm

I was suppose to be a Jesuit priest or a naval academy graduate. — Jimmy Buffett

Communication is the one class no one graduates from. Even the wisest man's words will be misinterpreted by a fool. — Shannon L. Alder

Graduating at the age of 21 was a wonderful age to hopefully start a career. — Rose Leslie

Most hackers graduate from Unix and Linux platforms. They know them intimately. They don't try to exploit them — Dean Stockwell

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. — Steve Jobs

As a founder of two organizations that recruit top college graduates to expand educational opportunity, I've spent a lot of time examining what's at work in successful classrooms and schools over the past two decades. — Wendy Kopp

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. — Marina Keegan

Remember that on October 1, 2015, the American Container Ship El Faro with 5 graduates of Maine Maritime Academy was lost at sea." Captain Hank Bracker — Hank Bracker

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. — Paul Ryan

A report released by the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Partnership for New York City predicts that by 2018, there will be 800,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States that require a master's degree or higher - and only around 550,000 American-graduates with this training. — Marvin Ammori

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students. — Alan Perlis

Graduates, I'm asking each of you, at some point, to act up, be misbehaved. Buck the system. Fight for what you believe in. This is the time to do it. You're the ones to do it. Your world, is like no other generation, you actually get to create the world that you can imagine. — Mark Ruffalo

The extraordinary power of influence is now within everyone's reach. Recent graduates, executive assistants, project managers, and business leaders can all benefit from Monarth's simple steps for 'getting everyone to follow your lead.' — Marshall Goldsmith

Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battle ... Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war. — George S. Patton Jr.

Graduates leave university and can't find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their families and pay for their children's education, always bumping up against the thing we all know as harsh reality. — Paulo Coelho

In the United States we have concentrated tremendous sums of money on the educational plant, seemingly with the idea that the right number of buildings will turn out the right number of graduates. Yet the teachers who actually instruct the future citizens of our country are more often than not miserably paid. If in the future we find ourselves with a lot of fourth-rate citizens, we have only ourselves to blame. — Louis L'Amour

I have been out of drama school for 13 years, so there are 13 years' worth of graduates behind me. — Samuel Barnett

In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school. — Christopher Bollen

The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life. — Darren Hardy

...a school's worth should be measured not by how its students perform on standardized tests but by how well they function as adult graduates of the school... — Terry Roberts

Making the future and the road to the future wealth lies in the youth of the present and future, and rebuilding the nation's institutions based on knowledgeable scientific foundations that require promising human capacities derived from college graduates. Universities are the makers of men, we are proud of their role and of the efforts of their administrators. — Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed. — Bell Hooks

One Forbes article suggests that as many as 53 percent of college graduates are unemployed or underemployed relative to their education level. — Shannon Young

If it is about education, then all who are college graduates should be wealthy, but we know that there are many highly educated, highly qualified, and highly experienced people who just manage to scrape by, if at all. — Stephen Richards

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. — Yeng Pway Ngon

Camfed graduates are active in their villages using their skills and resources to improve as many lives as possible. They are teaching financial literacy to marginalized women and bringing vital health care information to rural schoolchildren. Through example, they are demonstrating the power of philanthropy. — Ann Cotton

Universities used to prepare young adults for the real world. I dare say the graduates today go in without a clue and graduate without a clue. It's time to acknowledge the college degree is not worth what it was in the past. Times are changing, and so is the way we prepare our youth to survive in a competitive world. — Dale Archer

The environmental issues we face today are complex and span many knowledge domains. This undergraduate degree programme in Environmental Studies will nurture a pool of graduates who are able to think deeply and broadly about these issues, and help develop novel solutions for Singapore, Asia and beyond. I am delighted at this programme for another reason - it is the first undergraduate course that draws on expertise from eight Faculties in NUS, making full use of the comprehensive strengths of our University. — Tan Chorh Chuan

graduates of elite American universities who had little sense of what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of them decided to get a job working for a Wall Street investment bank or management consultancy. If you don't know what your passion is or what you really want to do, they said, then "you might as well go to Wall Street and make a lot of money if you can't think of anything better to do."36 And I have heard similar comments from young graduates of selective colleges and universities. Nobody has ever taught them that what you do influences the kind of person you will become. — Leonard Sax

If you have a student who graduates from college and they don't have a job, they are now able to stay on their family health plan. — Jacob Lew

No Arab country produces graduates who can compete with their East Asian counterparts; the only Muslim country whose graduates meet world standards is Turkey. University graduates throughout the Arab world have miserable prospects. "The average unemployment rate for the age group 15-24 years in the Group of Arab Countries reaches to 30%, compared with an average rate of world 14.4%," according to the Arab Labor Organization. "Problem [sic] of high unemployment rates among the educated graduates from universities and colleges, which reaches to 26.8% in Morocco and 19.3% in Algeria, 17.7 % in Jordan. It was noted that 94% of the unemployed in the Arab Republic of Egypt are in the age group 15-29 years, reflecting a lack of consistency of education plans to the needs of the Labor market."9 — David Goldman

The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after. — Newton D. Baker

33 percent of high school graduates who don't go on to college never read another book for the rest of their lives, and 42 percent of college graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Sadly, 80 percent of U.S. families didn't buy or read any books last year. — Jason Merkoski

Apart from finding a first job, college graduates seem to adapt more easily than those with only a high school degree as the economy evolves and labor-market needs change. — Derek Bok

Be open and honest, but perceptive to your boss's situation. That's my advice to graduates worried about working with a new boss. — Naomie Harris