The future is particularly bright for this year's graduates. Members of the Class of 2007 can expect plenty of job offers and starting salaries that are 10.3 percent higher than last year's undergrads, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a trade group for university job-placement officers.
 
Newly minted M.B.A.'s also have something to look forward to: Employers recruiting from b-schools plan to hire 22.1 percent more graduates than last year, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2007 survey.

And as an added commencement day bonus, students will be getting warm send-offs-and free career advice-from celebrity C.E.O.'s and other business all stars.

In recent years C.E.O.'s have become more popular choices at universities. "We're getting more requests for C.E.O.'s who have been there and done that," says Richard Schelp, managing partner with Executive Speakers Bureau, who places speakers at universities and associations.

Heads of state, Nobel Prize winners, humanitarians, and chief execs are perennial favorites at graduation ceremonies, but college dropouts occasionally make the program, too. One of them—Bill Gates, arguably the most famous Harvard student never to graduate—is the featured speaker at his almost-alma mater's commencement on Thursday.

Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1976 to start Microsoft. When he returns to campus, he will receive an honorary degree and will probably talk about entrepreneurship and the importance of philanthropy.

Also headed back to his alma mater is U.S. Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who will deliver the keynote graduation address at Dartmouth on June 10. A member of Dartmouth's class of 1968 and Goldman Sachs' former C.E.O., Paulson is expected to speak about business and public service.

Indeed, it's not just about making money this year. The themes of social responsibility, personal integrity, and an awareness of business ethics and global issues reverberated across sunny quadrangles and packed auditoriums as grads adjusted their mortar boards and soaked up the wisdom of today's leaders.

"The business of business is not business," Salesforce.com founder and C.E.O. Marc Benioff told University of Berkeley Haas School of Business graduates at their ceremony on May 20. "It is to do well while doing good."

John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, was much more explicit in explaining the conflicts of interest in profit-making and service in a message that was directly pointed at corruption.

"The more that our financial system takes, the less our investor makes," Bogle told graduates of Georgetown's McDonough School of Business. In a speech titled, "Enough," he cited a laundry list of operating expenses, commissions, fees, legal bills, marketing, and advertising expenses that add up to $500 billion a year that don't end up in customers' pockets.

"If you do enter this field, do so with your eyes wide open, recognizing that any endeavor that extracts value from its clients may find that it has been hoist by its own petard," Bogle said. "It is said on Wall Street that ‘money has no conscience.' But don't let that truism allow you to ignore your own conscience."

Professional and personal integrity was also the topic of Oprah Winfrey's address at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on May 12.  Before an audience of 30,000, Winfrey recalled how TV executives told her early in her career that she was "too black," "too emotional," and needed to change her name to something more recognizable.

"My integrity is not for sale, and neither is yours," Winfrey said. "Do not be a slave to any form of selling out."