Thousands of NC State students turned their tassels in Carter-Finley Stadium on Saturday as the university celebrated more than 7,400 graduates at its spring commencement ceremony.
The event began around 9 a.m. with a few words from Chancellor Kevin Howell, who told the crowd that NC State is proud to be the people’s university, a significant force in North Carolina’s economic vitality and dedicated to improving the lives of all North Carolinians. Harry Sideris, the CEO of Duke Energy and an NC State alumnus, delivered the keynote address and urged graduates to keep moving when the path ahead is not perfectly clear. “When opportunity knocks, don't say no,” he said. He also told them, “Don't worry if you haven't found exactly what lights you up yet. Wherever you are in your journey, here's my advice to you - embrace the uncomfortable.”
For the graduates crossing the stage, that message landed at a moment when many are trying to decide what kind of work they want to step into, and how much of it will be shaped by artificial intelligence. WRAL News spoke with graduates about whether AI represents opportunity or disruption, a question that hangs over many first job searches this spring.
Sharath Kumar Rameshbabu said he sees AI as a tool that can speed up work, not erase it. “I did an internship before, and in there, they have talked about the need for like AI as like an aid, because we believe AI is more so like something that speeds up the process,” he said. Rameshbabu added that using his own skills and beliefs alongside technology has helped him in college and is likely to matter in his career as well.
Not every graduate sounded confident about what comes next. Linda Dextre said she worries that wider use of AI could narrow some career paths if it is not handled carefully. “I worry a little bit about the career field narrowing and truncating a little bit due to increased usage of AI with lower usage of safety guardrails for using the technology,” she said. Maritza Delgado took a different view, pointing to healthcare as a field where human judgment still matters. “In a world where AI is so prominent and everything is just computer-based, me going into healthcare, I feel like that’s something that you can’t replicate,” she said.
The concern is not abstract. Harvard Business School researchers analyzed nearly all U.S. job postings from 2019 to March of 2025 and found openings for routine, automation-prone roles fell 13% after ChatGPT’s debut, while demand for more analytical, technical and creative jobs grew 20%. That backdrop gives Saturday’s graduation ceremony a sharper edge: the class celebrating its finish line is walking straight into a job market already being remade.
For NC State, the ceremony was both a celebration and a reminder of the pressure facing the next generation. Sideris told graduates not to wait for perfect certainty before taking the next step. For many of the more than 7,400 students in Carter-Finley Stadium, that may be the lesson they carry out of graduation and into a labor market where adaptability may matter as much as a degree. A related look at how students are preparing for that shift can be found in St Johns Graduation Fair gives seniors a fast track to Commencement 2026.
