One month after the University of the West Indies honored Violet Edwards with a scholarship in her name for being the fifth oldest to graduate college in the World, the City of Parkland has recognized the Jamaican-American for her achievement.
Ms. Edwards, the oldest person in Florida and the oldest Black American to have graduated from college, is a resident of the city. She was presented with her recognition certificate at the monthly meeting of the Parkland City Commission on Wednesday, August 17th.
In recognizing the 96-year-old for her incredible achievement, the city of Parkland said, “It is common for the City Commission to recognize members of our community at Commission meetings—frequently students for their academic and/or athletic achievements. What is uncommon is someone like Violet who has a remarkable story.”
The city commission stated that “Parkland is a community that isn’t short on good people doing things that make us all proud. But every now and then, someone emerges in an exceptional way. Someone who doesn’t just make us proud but makes us think about our own goals and what we want to accomplish.”
Violet started college in the 1980s but never finished because she had to tend to her family. Ironically, part of the help she provided to her family was paying for her daughter to go to medical school. For decades she worked in her daughter’s practice before deciding last year to finish her degree studies which she started in the 80s.
Even though the College of New Rochelle, where she started her degree program, went out of business, that didn’t stop the Jamaican from achieving her dreams. She got her credits transferred to Mercy College and took online courses. She ended up with a 4.0-grade point average, and at 96 years and 263 days old, she was conferred her Associate of Science degree on June 25, 2022, at her retirement home in the city.
To achieve her degree at her age and decades after starting is a fantastic feat. What is even more incredible is that Violet did it with online classes. It was only eleven years after her birth that the “concept of modern computer” was proposed by Alan Turning. Personal computers became a mass market product in the 1970s, and the internet, which started in 1983, only got popular in the 1990s.
According to Pew Research data, “only about 62% of college students finish their [degree] program within six years.” And the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) states that only 5% of Black full-time students graduate within the same period. Forbes magazine also reported that “Students who take a leave of absence are less than half as likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree within six years.”
