87-year-old graduates from University of Nebraska

Jean Kops, 87, acknowledges the crowds applause as she received her Sociology degree. Summer Commencement. August 15, 2015. (Photo by Craig Chandler/University Communications)

Donning a streak of purple hair under her black graduation cap, 87-year-old Jean Kops proved that it’s never too late to finish what you start.

After beginning her studies in the 1940s, Kops graduated this August 15, 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. According to a release, Kops left the college back in 1947.

“For majors, there just wasn’t a whole lot of choices for women and I think that’s why I got tired of school,” Kops said. A former commercial arts major in the university’s Teacher’s College, Kops said that teaching was never her passion.

After completing two years at the university, she headed back to her hometown of Bassett, Neb. where she married her late husband Lyle. They went on to raise their five daughters on a ranch close to Bassett.

According to a 1989 volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research is a statistic from the Department of Education, which found that the median years of school completed in 1940 was 10.3, and in 1950, 12.

Another finding compares the number of men versus women enrolled in college. In 1947, the U.S. Bureau of the Census found that 1,687,000 men were enrolled in college, while only 624,000 women were enrolled.

It wasn’t until 2011 that Kops revisited the idea of finishing her degree. After her husband passed away from an illness, she reconsidered the idea of completing the education that she had started 60 years earlier.

With the encouragement of her family, she started off with a couple of online courses and in Sept. 2012, moved to Lincoln, Neb. to attend classes in person. Like most new college students, Kops was nervous.

Though at first she worried about what her younger peers might think of her, Kops’s anxiety soon faded. Her daughter Cheryl Wagoner said, “…the more classes she took, the more she enjoyed not only the interactions with the other students and professors, but the actual process of learning.”

Unlike other graduates, Kops will not be perfecting her resume or updating her LinkedIn profile. Rather, her future plans include traveling, spending time with family and reading. What she said she will be doing, is displaying her degree on her wall.

Roxie Thomas, an 84-year-old Bay Area resident who originally hails from Fresno, Calif. completed high school, but did not go on to attend college, instead opting to work, where she says she received her education through various jobs. Though she hasn’t thought about returning to school herself, in response to Kops’s story, she says that the clock never runs out.

“It is so important to follow your dreams and it is never too late.”