The verb graduate first became controversial in the 19th century, when its use as an intransitive in a construction such as "He graduated from college" was censured by several American commentators, including Gould 1880 and Ayres 1881. The critics argued that since the college conferred the degree on the student, graduate should only be used transitively with the student as its object or in the passive construction "He was graduated from college." How such an idea originated is not clear. The OED shows that the intransitive graduate occurred in writing as early as 1807 (the transitive graduate is older, dating from the 15th century):
Four years are then to be passed at college before the student can graduate —Robert Southey, Letters from England, 1807 (OED)
By 1828 it was well enough established for Noah Webster to include it in his dictionary. The objections of the critics some 50 years later no doubt caused a few people to shun it, but its widespread use by the well-educated seems not to have been seriously affected:
I graduated from the Lawrence High School as many as five years ago —Robert Frost, letter, 11 Sept. 1897
The continued common use of the intransitive graduate has long since persuaded most commentators to admit its acceptability, but notions about its impropriety have not died out entirely among the general public. There are still people who make a point of saying "he was graduated" rather than "he graduated," although some commentators (such as Bernstein 1971 and Freeman 1983) now actually criticize such usage as old-fashioned. Those who indulge in it are, at the very least, in the minority; the intransitive graduate is now more common by far.
The use of graduate most likely to be criticized these days is a new transitive sense meaning "to graduate from":
... won't graduate high school in New York —advt, N.Y. Times, 19 June 1979
This use of graduate without from has been cited as an error by usage commentators dating back to Evans 1957. It occurs frequently in speech, but its appearance in edited prose is still relatively uncommon. Here are a few more examples of it from our files:
I was a lawyer, I had graduated law school —Arthur Frommer, quoted in Harper's, July 1972
... as Toby ... graduates Cambridge —Erica Abeel, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 28 Sept. 1975
"I graduated college in 1974," says Schwartz —Robert Lipsyte, N.Y. Post, 2 May 1977
"... I knew her as a probation officer before she graduated law school...." —Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent, 1987(资料出处：韦伯斯特英语用法词典)