About 300 graduands in education, teaching and pharmacy attended the ceremony at Dunedin's Town Hall.
Another 50 graduated in absentia.
New Zealand hymn writer Shirley Murray received an honorary doctor of literature degree at the ceremony.
The first female rector of St Andrew's College in Christchurch, Christine Leighton, gave the graduation address.
She told graduates that how they developed their own understanding of themselves, their interactions with others and their relationships - collectively known as their emotional intelligence, or EQ - was likely to determine where they went in life after finishing university.
Mrs Leighton has held teaching and leadership positions in secondary schools for 29 years.
She was principal of St Hilda's Collegiate School in Dunedin from 1999 to 2007.
To be successful, graduates needed to be self-aware, self-regulating, motivated, empathetic and have developed social skills, she said.
"Every business knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job, and also they know a story about someone with solid, but not extraordinary intellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared."
It was not that IQ and technical skills were irrelevant, they were what the qualifications graduands were receiving were all about, but it was EQ that most likely would allow them to eventually achieve excellent performance.
"The good news is EQ can be learned, and increases with age.
It is known as maturity.
"You haven't finished your education - you have just begun.
Now begins the university of life."
