After a little push from her son to return to school, Patricia Sias Ellis officially graduated from college at 79.
Research shows that Black and female students are more likely to graduate from college later in life due to numerous barriers, like familial and personal struggles, that impact degree attainment. Ellis is a testament to the later-in-life college experience due to choosing to work and take care of her family. According to 11Alive, the senior’s May 10 graduation from Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, comes 60 years after her decision to hold her college education to work and support her husband’s and son’s collegiate endeavors.
Ellis has finally made her way across the stage with a degree in criminal justice. “I always knew I wasn’t finished,” she said. “These experiences I should have had at 19 or 20 years old — they are the same at 79 years old.”
A slight nudge from her son to return to school prompted the matron to turn off her soap operas and enroll in a higher education program. Eight years ago, Ellis made the move and enrolled at Atlanta Metro College, CNN/WXIA reported. She later transferred to Clayton State and completed classes a few at a time. Her studies were derailed in 2022 after doctors found a 10-pound tumor on her kidney, which prompted surgery. However, Ellis recovered with the determination to complete her degree even faster.
“I just had a good time, in this whole process, especially this last year when I realized it’s really going to happen,” she said. “I’ve just been over the moon.”
Later-in-life graduates have accounted for about 20% of college graduates over the decades, according to research published by Brookings. Black students account for 32% to 49% of late college graduates compared to 15% to 26% of white college graduates. A report published by The Century Foundation, contributed by Qyana Stewart, an advocate and researcher on Black women’s economic mobility and equity in higher education, examined barriers particularly faced by Black women that impact college choice and degree attainment. The team of Black women scholars and researchers noted the impacts of limited access to financial aid resources, gendered racism and sexism, and familial and personal struggles. “A system not designed by or for Black women resulted in white men earning college degrees two centuries before them,” Stewart wrote. “White women and Black men earned bachelor’s degrees more than 30 years before Black women, making Black women the last group of American citizens to attain higher education.”
For Ellis, her later-in-life college experience has marked “the best years” of her life. As the new grad focuses her next chapter on contributing to her community, her future may find her in a master’s program.
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