Across the nation, troves of college students disenroll prior to graduation; students who do graduate often leave campus still searching as if something is missing, inadequate, and deficient. Indeed, something is missing and unsustainable in this malaise. Drawing on Tia Brown McNair, "et al." (2016), who call for student-ready campus ecosystems, and Complete College America's Purpose First strategy (2019), which recognizes that a clear purpose represents a missing link between first-year programs, education pathways, and career development, this commentary suggests that building more sustainable institutional ecologies and more enduring life-affirming impacts necessitates recognizing a blind spot: the everyday language of higher education.