‘Tis the season! Commencement season is one of the best parts of higher education.
The joy is real.
Families cheering wildly for names they absolutely did not hear correctly. Faculty trying to maintain dignity while wearing medieval robes in questionable temperatures. Your senior leaders jumping up and down to House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” Students balancing cords, stoles, honors medallions, and at least one suspiciously tiny bottle of Fireball tucked into a pocket somewhere.
It’s a good season.
And honestly, after the past few years in higher ed, I think many of us needed the reminder.
Students accomplished something meaningful. They persisted through uncertainty, financial strain, political tensions, mental health challenges, caregiving responsibilities, and one of the strangest entry-level labor markets we’ve seen in years.
That deserves celebration.
But if you work in career services long enough, commencement season also comes with another feeling.
A quieter one.
Because underneath the celebration is often another question running quietly in the background:
How many of our graduates truly feel ready for what comes next?
Not: Did they graduate?
But: Do they have momentum? Do they know how to navigate uncertainty? Will they continue seeking support if they need it? Do they believe they belong in professional spaces?
And this year, I think many career services teams are feeling that tension more acutely.
The labor market is tighter in some industries. Hiring timelines are slower. Students are hearing mixed messages constantly:
“Follow your passion.” “No, major in something practical.” “Network aggressively.” “But don’t seem transactional.” “Apply everywhere.” “But tailor every application individually.”
Honestly, at times it sounds a bit like coaches yelling instructions during Little League:
“Step up!” “No, back up!” “Swing earlier!” “Wait for your pitch!” “Hustle!” “Relax!”
At a certain point, everyone just needs a juice box and a moment to regroup.
And yet students are expected to navigate all of this while making enormously high-stakes decisions about work, identity, finances, and future direction.
That’s not easy.
Career services professionals know this intimately because commencement does not actually represent the end of the work for many teams.
In some ways, it marks the beginning of a different phase.
The outreach phase. The reassurance phase. The “yes, you can still use career services after graduation” phase.
The phase where teams continue helping graduates build confidence, navigate uncertainty, maintain momentum, and translate their experiences into opportunities.
And increasingly, many teams are doing this while trying to understand outcomes with less visibility than they would like.
First Destination Survey response rates are thinner at many institutions right now. Some graduates stay highly engaged after commencement. Others disappear quickly into transition, relocation, caregiving responsibilities, graduate school preparation, or simply exhaustion.
Which means many career services leaders are left holding a complicated mix of observations, instincts, conversations, and partial data while trying to answer a very important question: Where are students gaining momentum consistently and where are they still struggling to find traction?
What commencement season actually reveals
That’s part of why I think commencement season reveals something important about the student experience. Not just whether students completed college, but whether they built enough confidence, connection, and career momentum during college to navigate what comes afterward.
Because confidence tends to compound.
Students who had opportunities to practice networking, engage in experiential learning, build mentoring relationships, reflect on their strengths, and connect academics to future direction often leave with more professional confidence over time.
Not because they have everything figured out. Almost nobody does at 22. Frankly, many people at 52 are improvising with better blazers.
But they developed familiarity navigating uncertainty.
Other students may graduate academically successful while still feeling unsure how to translate their experiences into next steps, advocate for themselves professionally, or build relationships in spaces that still feel unfamiliar.
That distinction matters.
And commencement season often makes those differences more visible. Not always through formal data. Through patterns.
Patterns in appointments. Patterns in conversations. Patterns in who proactively follows up. Patterns in which students built relationships and momentum steadily across four years—and which students may have largely navigated college alone.
That’s why I think commencement season should function as a strategic reflection point for institutions.
Not in a cynical way.
And not in a “let’s turn graduation into an assessment exercise” way either. Nobody wants to discuss institutional fragmentation while someone’s grandmother is trying to take 400 photos beside the fountain.
But strategically, this season surfaces important institutional questions earlier than many metrics do.
Questions like:
Where are students building confidence early? Which students are least likely to seek support proactively? Where are relationships and mentorship happening consistently? Where are students still navigating disconnected systems on their own? Which experiences are actually helping students build momentum—not just participation?
Those are not small questions.
They connect directly to: – retention – belonging – alumni engagement – career outcomes – institutional reputation – and increasingly, public confidence in the value of higher education itself
That’s why the institutions making the strongest progress right now are not simply adding more senior-year programming.
They are building momentum earlier and more intentionally across the student experience.
Through: – first-year career exposure – integrated reflection – mentoring relationships – experiential learning – alumni engagement – clearer pathways – faculty partnerships – proactive outreach – and systems that make support easier to navigate
In other words, they are treating confidence and connection as outcomes worth designing for—not accidental byproducts of college.
Final Thought
Commencement should absolutely remain joyful.
Students earned that joy. So did the professionals supporting them.
But I also think commencement season quietly reminds career services leaders of something important: Completion and momentum are not always the same thing.
A diploma matters tremendously.
But students also need confidence in navigating uncertainty. Relationships they can lean on. The ability to translate experiences into opportunities. A sense that they still have support while figuring things out.
And the truth is, many career services teams continue carrying that work long after the applause ends.
The institutions that recognize this—and intentionally build systems that help students develop momentum throughout the student experience—will be far better positioned to strengthen retention, student success, career outcomes, and long-term institutional trust in the years ahead.
