An exceptional 90-year-old woman, Joyce DeFauw, has achieved her lifelong dream of earning a university degree after over 70 years of making her first attempt.
Northern Illinois, the University of Illinois, has given a whole new meaning to the term super senior, used for students who take longer than the usual four years to get their undergraduate degrees.
On Sunday, the 90-year-old received a bachelor’s of general studies from Northern Illinois University more than seven decades after she first stepped on campus, becoming what officials believe to be the eldest person to ever graduate from the school.
“I’d never dreamed I’d be around at this time, but here I am,” DeFauw said about her academic journey in a report published by the local news outlet WREX. “I’ve learned that I can do things I never thought I could do, with the help of others. You can never quit learning.”
According to WREX, DeFauw initially enrolled at her alma mater in 1951, when Americans were first introduced to the inventions of super glue, videotape recorders, and credit cards. The school was known as Northern Illinois State Teachers College at the time. Her name was Joyce Kane, and originally she pursued a teaching degree but switched her major to home economics.
DeFauw, as she tells it, was a few semesters shy from completing her degree when she “met this good-looking guy” at church. She ultimately married that man, Don Freeman Sr., and raised three children with him before he died.
DeFauw later remarried and, with her second husband, the late Roy DeFauw, raised six more children, including two sets of twins. Then, in 2019, when she was in her late 80s, she decided to sign herself up to complete the degree she had started all those years ago at what is now known as Northern Illinois in DeKalb.
Using a computer given to her as a gift, DeFauw took her classes online, including through shutdowns associated with the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. It was the first computer she ever owned, WREX reported, citing her family.
After walking across the graduation stage Sunday, DeFauw said she wanted to inspire others who, like her, wondered whether it would be worth going back to school. DeFauw said the answer to her was obvious.
“You can’t put a value on it, in my opinion,” DeFauw said. “Just don’t give up. I mean, if you have the opportunity, take that opportunity, and you never know. A lot of us get sidetracked or whatever, but go back. Don’t give up.”
DeFauw was among nearly a quarter of people who earned bachelor’s degrees and took more than the standard four years to complete their programs. But it is much more unusual for people her age to complete a bachelor’s degree.
In fact, in 2016, Japan’s Shigemi Hirata set a Guinness world record by attaining a Bachelor of Arts from the Kyoto University of Art and Design at age 96. The prior holder was Nola Ochs, who was 95 when she received her diploma from Fort Hays State University in Kansas in 2007.
