On December 11, under a blue sky at Mountain America Stadium, ASU President Michael Crow fittingly affirmed to the thousands of undergraduates earning their degrees, “We all believe in the future, or you wouldn’t be sitting today in this stadium.”

More than 11,000 ASU students earned degrees during fall 2023. Two-thirds of that total were undergraduates and the remainder earned graduate degrees. Of that total, nearly 1,500 are international students, an 11% increase over last fall, and 4,600 are Arizona residents. About 5,800 took classes through ASU Online, including the almost 1,000 Starbucks College Achievement Plan graduates.

Crow empowered the ASU graduates to be “soldiers” of that future; “We’re here to understand the past, to learn from the past. We’re here to enable human advances. We’re here to create wondrous things.”

The joyous graduates were also encouraged to think about the achievements of their ancestors, all the generations that came before and their sacrifices to advance the planet.

Crow adamantly cautioned the new graduates about those in social media and news who build their fortunes on divisiveness, advising them that, “This place — higher education — is the antidote to these informational cul-de-sacs.”

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