Praise, Advice and Reminders of the Sour Economy for Graduates - SAM DILLON, New York Times

Delivering the commencement address last month at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, President Obama told graduates they were a generation who must “find a path back to prosperity.” Graduates heard a similar message at hundreds of colleges this spring, as commencement orators — including actors, executives, poets and heads of state — leavened their congratulatory messages with acknowledgment of the bleak marketplace outside campus. “We are living in the most difficult economic environment since the Great Depression,” Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, said at the University of Wisconsin.