Video: Seeking a College Degree After 50

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) — If you think you are too old to go back to college, think again. A large number of older Americans are hitting the books again, going after their academic degrees.

Don’t try telling 62-year-old Itawamba Community College (ICC) staff member Louie Dearman that higher education and obtaining a degree at his age is impossible.

“If someone told me I would be back in school at this age, I would have told them they were crazy. It started out to be a joke,” Tupelo college student Louie Dearman said.

Apparently Dearman got a card from Ole Miss in 2009 inviting him to Student Day. The following day, he enrolled in college. Nobody seems to be laughing now.

“My family gave me an alternative and that was to either go back to school or go to the nursing home. So, which would you choose if given that option,” Dearman said.

Dearman chose the latter option, and confesses that he thought about quitting on at least three occasions, but got encouragement from his young mentor, Victoria Cochran and his wife, Charlotte.

“Normally, I was actually working a part time job and working a full time job and going to school. And she said, ‘Are you wearing the same clothes again today?’ And then she thought a minute and said, ‘Don’t tell me you sat up all night again,'” Dearman said.

He took courses and finished with a degree from ICC. It was during graduation ceremonies along with his peers at ICC when it dawned on Dearman and his wife that there was indeed an age gap.

“I’m the only gray-headed person in class. And she said, ‘You don’t think that much about it until they asked us to take our hats off for prayer,'” Dearman said.

Dearman already has a bachelors degree from MUW, and given his academic load right now, he just might get a little grayer while pursuing his online masters degree from that institution.

Our returning student is expected to clinch his masters in Public Health Education by the end of 2015.