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."