checking in with my kids that just graduated.

linked lists aren't really emphasized anymore. languages have built in lists now. they had heard of them, knew what they were, but would probably struggle to do one from scratch.

of course i'm old school and kind of think that is basic, but colleges now aren't teaching it much anymore.

If someone can't implement the very simplest Graph Structure, Linked Lists, then I assume they can't implement any linked data structure. Learning variations of Linked Lists is where you start, e.g. https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/