The viral video features young Vivek Ramaswamy, then an 18-year-old student at St Xavier High School, reflecting on his journey through high school.

1. Vivek Ramaswamy reacts to viral video of his high school graduation speech: ‘I was against…’  Hindustan Times
2. Vivek Ramaswamy's High School Graduation Speech Goes Viral Ahead Of 'DOGE' Appointment With Elon Musk  NDTV
3. Donald Trump's inner circle feeling ‘iced out’ due to his close bond with Elon Musk; here's how Melania feels  Hindustan Times
4. Will Elon Musk be able to cut $2 trillion from US government spending?  BBC.com
5. DOGE days are coming for the US under Trump's two Musketeers  The Times of India

Vivek Ramaswamy has gained attention with his old high school graduation speech video after being appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency.

A quiet and less formal ceremony is held for neurodivergent students at Sheffield Hallam University.

; Credit: /Michelle Kondrich for NPR

Elissa Nadworny and Eda Uzunlar | NPR

In Jasmine Williams' family, graduating from the University of Michigan is a rite of passage. Her parents met on the campus, and her older sister graduated from the school a few years ago. She remembers sitting bundled up in the family section for that graduation. "It was overwhelming to feel so many people that proud," she says, "I remember sitting there watching her, and that was probably the first time I was like, 'OK, yeah, I like this. I can't wait to do this.'

This year, Williams' own graduation will look a bit different. The main undergraduate ceremony will be all virtual, though the university has invited students to watch that ceremony from the football stadium on campus known as the Big House. There will be no family members in attendance, and students will be required to have a negative COVID-19 test result to enter.

"I think it's hard not to downplay it when it's reduced to a Zoom," says Williams. But come Saturday, she's planning on donning her cap and gown and heading to the stadium with friends. "Knowing that we are going to the Big House to watch together as a class makes everything way more enjoyable for the weekend; to be able to at least get some remnants of what I witnessed years ago with my sister." Her family plans to host a streaming party from their home in Detroit.

As an academic year like no other comes to an end, colleges and universities are celebrating their graduates in a variety of ways. Some schools, like the University of Idaho and Virginia Tech are hosting multiple smaller, in-person ceremonies to comply with social distancing mandates. Others, like Iowa State, are hosting large ceremonies in football stadiums and outdoor arenas. There's also a handful that are doing virtual-only again, like the University of Washington and Portland State University. At some schools, including the University of Michigan and Emmanuel College in Boston, in-person events are restricted to just graduates; family and friends have to watch from a livestream.

For lots of students, the effort to be in-person is greatly appreciated. "You work hard those four years, you dream of that day, getting to graduate in-person and walk across the stage," says Jamontrae Christmon, a graduating senior at Tennessee State University in Nashville. For most of the year he assumed graduation would be virtual. He even sent out his graduation announcements to friends and family — and left the date off. Weeks later, he learned TSU would actually hold a May 1st in-person ceremony in the football stadium.

"I haven't been sleeping much this week at all. I'm just happy. Excited," says Christmon.

But planning for an event in an ongoing public health emergency has proven to be stressful. Steve Bennett, the chief of staff for academic affairs at Syracuse University, has worked to create commencement ceremonies that are as close to a normal year as possible.

"This may be the single most challenging special event that our team has put together, maybe ever," explains Bennett. "And it's because we keep having to plan towards a moving target."

Syracuse's plan for graduation is to have multiple smaller commencement ceremonies in their stadium; everyone in attendance has to be fully vaccinated or show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test. According to state guidance, the stadium can only reach 10 % capacity, so graduates are limited to two guests per person. Despite the restrictions, the team that planned the ceremonies is determined to make it one that the class of 2021 deserves.

"The students have been through a lot this year. Graduating seniors lost a number of student experiences due to pandemic conditions that are important to them," says Bennett. That's why having the in-person component was essential. "It was really important to the university, given [the seniors'] commitment to us, that we have a commitment to them."

At California Lutheran University, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., graduation will be celebrated as a drive-in style event at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. Each graduate can bring one carful of people to the fairgrounds parking lot, which can accommodate up to 700 vehicles. Inspired by the city's drive-in concert events, there'll be a stage with speakers and a jumbo screen.

"That's ultimately what led us to our decision to have it at the fairgrounds. Since it's a drive-in and they're staying in their cars, they were allowed to bring family... that was just really important to us," says Karissa Oien, who works in academic affairs at California Lutheran University and is the lead organizer for the drive-in commencement. She's been planning the university's ceremonies for 13 years, and knows how important graduation can be — not just for students, but for those who helped them along the way as well.

"We wanted to have that moment again. Where the families can see their students cross the stage and be there with them."

Jamontrae Christmon, the graduating senior from Tennessee State University, will have his parents, an uncle and one of his sisters there with him at Hale Stadium. "It's just something about your parents being there," says Christmon, "you want to look into the audience and maybe see your parents and you hear them scream your name when they call your name to walk across the stage."

As the day gets closer, Christmon says he's been thinking about the moments of self-doubt he had along the way. "I could have easily said 'I'm not cut out for college' and just gave up, but I didn't." He says his family was a big part of that motivation.

"Not many in my family even attended college, let alone graduated. So this is a big deal," says Christmon. "To me it means I broke the cycle. And that's what they always wanted."

He expects his mother will cry, and likely, he will too.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: LA Johnson/NPR

Elissa Nadworny and Lauren Migaki | NPR

Writing a graduation speech is a tricky task. Should you be funny, or sincere? Tell a story — or offer advice? For Yusef Pierce, a graduating senior in California, the job of putting together his public address was a bit more challenging.

"Being inside, I can't really refer to other graduation speeches," Pierce says. He's speaking by phone from inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security prison in Norco. "I was just trying to come up with what sounded like a graduation speech."

He is the first person to graduate with a bachelor's degree from the Inside-Out program at Pitzer College, a liberal arts school outside Los Angeles. In a normal year, the school would bring traditional students by bus to the prison to take classes alongside the students who are in prison.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, those classes are happening online. Pierce shared his Zoom square with 10 other guys, all wearing the CRC's blue uniforms and seated at those classic classroom desks, where the chair and the table are attached. This spring, his classes included topics like feminism for men, microeconomics and mass incarceration.

In one of those classes on a recent evening this spring, professor Nigel Boyle goes around asking each student what they're looking forward to doing that week. Pierce replies: "I'm looking forward to doing a lot of homework!"

"Every professor wants a Yusef in your class," says Boyle, who leads the Inside-Out program and teaches Pierce's Wednesday night class about mass incarceration. "You want that student who's bright, does the work, but is also helping to bring along the others."

It was only natural then that Pierce would be one of the college's graduation speakers.

"We don't label the student speaker as a valedictorian," explains Boyle. "But it happens that Yusef has a 4.0, and he's got a really interesting story to tell."

Pierce is in his early 30s and is a bit of a nerd and a class leader. He also writes poetry and paints. "It is true that oppression often requires that individuals make themselves extraordinary in order to simply survive," reads his artist's statement in an online exhibit of his work. "My paintings are entire conversations on canvas."

Eventually, he says, he wants to be a college professor, working with formerly incarcerated students.

"So he wants my job," says Boyle, laughing, "and he'd be much better at it than I am."

Boyle serves as the academic adviser to all of the incarcerated students, and he has become a mentor to Pierce, navigating him through the graduation process. In one of the last classes of the semester, Boyle hosts an impromptu fashion show, wearing his own blue cap and gown, backing away from the camera to give the onlooking students a full view of his outfit.

The guys inside cheer and whistle. "Do a spin," one guy shouts. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" another yells.

As the cheering dies down, Boyle looks for Pierce on the screen. "He doesn't know this, so it may be a slight surprise," he tells the class, "but, Yusef, you will also be receiving these cords." He drapes dark orange cords around his shoulders. "These cords are for students who graduate with honors in their degrees. Congratulations, Yusef, you are going to graduate with honors."

***

The story of how Yusef Pierce wound up in these college classes, wound up inside prison at all, starts with trauma. When he was a teen, his older brother was shot and killed. "He was murdered in the front yard of our home, right in front of my face," he explains, "and so I had to call my mom and let her know what had happened." All these years later, it's still something he doesn't like to talk about. He considered putting it in his graduation speech, but took it out, worried it might be too much for his mom to hear.

"It had a traumatic effect on all of us," Drochelle Pierce tells me over the phone, from her house in Victorville, Calif. She remembers a change in Yusef around that time.

"It was just kind of one thing after another. He got into a little bit of trouble. He allowed people that he associated with to kind of influence him in a direction that really wasn't him." Yusef finished high school, but in his early 20s he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery. Drochelle Pierce says she was beside herself when she learned his sentence would be nearly 20 years. "I tell you, honestly, I never envisioned that Yusef would ever go to prison. Never, never. Never."

A few months into Yusef's prison sentence, she wrote him a letter. "What's done is done," she wrote. "You, now more than ever, must diligently seek and obtain higher education."

It wasn't a new message. Education had always been at the center of her relationship with Yusef. When he was young, he remembers riding in the car with his mom, a sociology textbook open on his lap. "She wouldn't let me turn on the radio," he says. "She would make me read to her."

"Oh, I made [my kids] read everything," Drochelle Pierce says. "If they read it out loud, I knew they were reading it. That's the only way I would know that they were actually reading anything."

Today, the two talk on the phone nearly every day. "He was always a deep thinker," says Pierce. She knows she sounds like a typical proud mother, but she can't help it: "Yusef is very smart."

In California, college classes can shorten a prison sentence. So when the opportunity first arose for Yusef Pierce to take courses in prison, it felt like simply a means to an end. "I just want to get home sooner," he remembers joking with a friend at the time. "If they gave us time off for going to college, I would walk out of here with a Ph.D.!"

But by the time Pitzer College started offering classes for a bachelor's degree, Pierce found to his surprise that he really liked college.

"I loved it because it gave me validation," he says. "To know that somebody was reading my stuff and that somebody felt like the things that I was thinking about and writing were worth something. I got really addicted to that validation, and it just really turned me into an overachiever. And I just took class after class after class."

That drive paid off.

After writing and rewriting a number of drafts, on May 15 Pierce delivered his final graduation speech to hundreds of Pitzer graduates and their family members and friends. The content he landed on? That letter his mom sent him all those years ago.

"I realize now that I've saved this letter because it was meant for me way back then to share it with you all today," he says, dressed in his white cap and gown, draped in a kente stole, with the prison classroom where he has spent so much time in the background. "It reads, 'Dear son, I was so glad to see you Monday ...' "

As he reads the letter aloud, he gets to the part where his mother, a big poetry fan, included the lines from Invictus, a poem by William Ernest Henley. Pierce looks directly into the camera as he reads; he knows this part by heart.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Drochelle Pierce watched the speech on her laptop at home, with family gathered around. "We were all crying. We were just boohooing. It was just so sweet," she says.

The final line of the poem:

It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.

"I love that so much," she says. "I sent that to my son because I wanted him to think in terms of 'OK, here you are now. What happens to you from this point going forward, it really depends on you.' "

She is proud of her son and inspired by him too. "Look what he did. He turned a bad situation into something very, very positive. Here he is, graduating with his degree."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Total Graduates: 111,628, breaking the record for the largest single-denomination graduation once again

Tarrant Events Center's event pros take grad parties to the next level.

Zion Christian Mission Center and Chairman Man-Hee Lee of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, held their Class 115, 110,000 Joint Graduation Ceremony' at the Shincheonji Cheongju Church Branch with approximately 111,628 graduates from around the world.

Congratulations to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023!

Today, you become masters of business administration... spelled with lower-case letters for legal purposes. Your diploma is waiting for you just across the stage.

But first, there's one final skill to impart: the pitch. We wouldn't be doing our job as a half-baked parody of a business school if we didn't leave you with the confidence and opportunity to stand in front of an investor and ask for money. We understand what you ambitious business school graduates really want is the chance to launch something and get rich.

So we're combining graduation with a little test of ideas, a showdown of startups, a competition of companies. We are going to put our own spin on a pitch competition like you see on Shark Tank. We hear from five listeners with real ideas for startups.

Can they make a successful pitch? What will investors be looking for in their presentation? Can they come prepared with persuasive total addressable market analyses? Who will have the sharpest customer pain points to solve? We shall see.

Our business expert will give us a rare glimpse into the mind of investors and what they're looking for. Only one graduate will be crowned the winner as this year's valedictorian.

If you want to get your diploma right now, take the 2023 Planet Money Summer School Quiz to earn your diploma!

If you share it on social media, tag us so we can celebrate with you.

Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

On Tuesday, May 17th at 7:00 PM the Forest Hills Central Class of 2022 with hold their Commencement Ceremony at LMCU Ballpark.  Please share the link below with family and friends who are unable to attend this event.  Live feed will start at 5:45 PM on the day of the event. Congratulations Class of 2022! […]

The post Central High School Class of 2022 Graduation – LIVE STREAM appeared first on Forest Hills Public Schools.

Toronto, ON – Starting Tuesday, June 6 the next generation of leaders will graduate from Canada’s top university. This year, U of T will host 27 different ceremonies (two more than in 2016) over 13 days for almost 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students from the university’s three campuses in downtown Toronto, Scarborough and Mississauga. They […]

Graduates of the 2020 high school class in Atlanta, Georgia, are going to be wearing their graduation garb made of recycled plastic bottles. Coca-Cola began collecting plastic bottles at its headquarters as part of Earth Day activities. The goal is to gather 7,000 bottles, enough to make graduation outfits for 200 graduates. 

I'm in the US at the moment, where two of my nephews have recently finished (mostly now AmE in this sense) high school. That is to say, they (AmE) graduated from high school. Though their graduation ceremonies were in June, they are still in the midst of graduation party season—and we arrived in time to attend one of those parties. Invitations are extended to extended family, family friends, the graduate's classmates/friends and their nuclear families. And all family units who attend will bring a gift for the graduate. Back when I graduated, these were mostly presents you could unwrap. Dictionaries were common graduation gifts, and I recall getting a  cookbook (orig. more AmE, vs BrE cookery book) and things for my (AmE) dorm room. I also got two handmade dolls, meant to represent me as a graduate—and since I'm at my childhood home, you get to see them. They're looking pretty good at 41 years old.

These days, graduation presents mostly come in envelopes. My first stop on this US trip was at the bank, to get some crisp (AmE) bills/(BrE) banknotes to slip into cards for the two nephews as well my niece, who has a freshly minted BSc in Economics. (If you've read The Prodigal Tongue, you've met her before. She was the niece who had things to say about British bacon.) 

High school graduation parties are generally not held in England—partly because there one does not graduate from high school. Graduation is only for those who get a degree from a university. But even when people graduate with a degree, family parties like this are not common. Generally, Americans do a lot more of this kind of party-throwing and gift-giving to mark life transitions (and help out a bit). See the earlier post about showers. 

Meanwhile, my 16-year-old (aka Grover) has recently finished secondary school in England. (Her secondary school, as it happens and unusually for England, has high school in its name.) Before school finished, she took 27 exams over 6 weeks in 9 subjects—this is what's known as the GCSEs (General Certificate[s] of Secondary Education). (NB: Many of the educational issues that come up here have been described in previous blog posts—rather than clicking on each link here, you might want to save your efforts for the 'related posts' links below.) Grover won't know her results in those exams till late August, when she'll be able to enrol(l) in the sixth-form college that's accepted her. (Though she's accepted to the college, she won't know until she has her exam results whether she's met the prerequisites for the A-level subjects she's chosen.) 

Her status has been difficult to explain to her American family. Sixth-form college is not what Americans think of as college, which would be called university in BrE. In England, sixth-form (and many other diverse things!) counts as further education—after secondary school, but not degree-level study. In an effort to translate her status, she's started telling Americans that she's graduated. Her reasoning for this is that (a) they had a little ceremony in an assembly on their last day of school, (b) she's going to something called college, and (c) she's had a prom (an imitation of the American tradition for these younger students). But since she doesn't even know whether she's passed her exams,* it can't really be counted as "graduating", can it? I have suggested to her that she may be misrepresenting her situation. She doesn't mind. It might yet pay off...

What she is, in Britain, is a school leaver. Instead of getting a mortar board and gown, she got a (orig. BrE) hoodie. (Pic here from an Etsy shop. Grover's hoodie is back in Brighton.)

*Oh, I'm sure she's passed. Whether she's got the prerequisite grades is another matter, so it's all a bit stressful. 

PS: While on this holiday, I have missed the University of Sussex graduation. I usually go, but since Grover's school ended early this year, we took advantage of being able to travel before the prices go insane during the (BrE) school holidays. (As Paul in the comments section notes, GCSE students just stop going to school after their last exam—it's very anticlimatic, but it got G out of school about a month earlier than usual. We hung around for the prom in early July.)

So, I want to say: Congratulations to our BA English Language and Linguistics and BA English Language and Literature graduates of 2024! Here's the outfit you didn't get to see me wear.

Related posts:

Types of schools and school years 
(the one that's linked-to a LOT above!)

2021 UK-to-US Word of the Year: university

Academic titles and address

And lots of others with the Education label

The Martin A. Dale '53 Fellowship provides grants for Princeton seniors to spend the year after graduation on "an independent project of extraordinary merit." Juliette Carbonnier and Collin Riggins are the latest recipients.

An NPR listener is graduating soon with her MBA. She wants to know if it's OK celebrate her achievement by asking loved ones to buy her gifts from a registry, similar to what people do for weddings.

Federal watchdogs find that Utah inflated its high school graduation rate in the last of a series of reports warning states not to make end runs around the rules for calculating graduation rates.

More high school students than ever are graduating, and a new report suggests that’s not due to lowered standards—it’s because students are actually learning more.

A new evaluation of an Oakland, Calif., school district program designed to wrap black male students in a culturally rich and supportive environment is paying off.

A new study shows that police shootings affect the learning and emotional well-being of students in nearby schools, particularly nonwhite students.

Supporting F-1 Students in Obtaining Meaningful Employment Post-Graduation Supporting F-1 Students in Obtaining Meaningful Employment Post-Graduation

fairfieb Mon, 11/13/2023 - 09:09

We’ve all been there. You’ve gone to the store or scrolled through countless online sites, desperately searching for a graduation gift that’s unique, funny, and something your friend won’t toss in a drawer and forget about. Well, it turns out there’s a new trend catching fire, and it’s a fake college diploma. Yes, you heard […]

The post Why Fake College Diplomas Are the Latest Comedy Trend in Graduation Gifts appeared first on Chart Attack.

Advice you don't want from a maniac you don't trust.

As many as 93,435 students from Grade V to Grade IX in 358 schools across the State appeared for 2023-2024 BDU examinations

Channelling Trump, Baldwin dispenses some words of advice to the class.

You’ll never guess their keynote speaker.

The Melrose Place star was overjoyed as her 22-year-old daughter Ava graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

There doesn't seem to be anywhere to recycle one-time-use polyester graduation gowns so maybe they shouldn't be an option.

The New York State Board of Regents’ reassessment of high school graduation standards won’t change the state’s troubled standardized testing system, but could allow more ways for students to graduate.

Connecticut four-year colleges cost more and have lower rates of completion than their national peers. That’s the finding of a report to be released Tuesday by an affiliate of a national public education advocacy organization.

Long Island’s high school graduation rate increased slightly in 2019. That’s according to data from the state Education Department.

Graduation speeches tend to be predictable and repetitive. They rarely leave a lasting impression. But a couple months ago, Harvard Graduate School of Education student Donovan Livingston's voice echoed around the world as his poetic commencement speech went viral .

Birmingham graduate offers advice to budding film makers.

In lieu of an in-person graduation on May 8, the college announced it would recognize for a month on its website 176 graduates receiving associate's and bachelor's degrees, a press release said.

High schools across the state are devising plans for graduation ceremonies, which will look different because of the coronavirus, COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit AILSA CHANG, HOST: For the high school class of 2020, this senior year has been a series of disappointing cancellations due to the pandemic - first, classes, then prom and now graduation. Some schools are trying out video conference graduation ceremonies, and then there are the schools that are trying something a little different. NPR's Tovia Smith reports. TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: For the millions of high school seniors who've been robbed of their capstone year, their last season on varsity teams, senior prom, awards night, it's been hard to let go of graduation, too. KEN FREESTON: To not have one just doesn't seem right to us. VINCE DIGRANDI: Absolutely. They've earned it. That's where I'm coming from. SMITH: In North Salem, N.Y., Superintendent Ken Freeston and Principal Vince DiGrandi started brainstorming last month for ways to get their seniors some pomp despite the circumstance, and they called a nearby venue. DIGRANDI: John, where we're at is

Amid all the disappointments and cancellations for high school seniors this year because of COVID-19, many schools around the nation are scrambling to salvage at least some sort of graduation for the class of 2020. Many are considering holding ceremonies online or staging some sort of drive-by celebration. "To not have [graduation] just doesn't seem right to us," says Ken Freeston, schools superintendent in North Salem, N.Y. North Salem High School Principal Vince DiGrandi agrees. "Absolutely, they've earned it," he says. Along with the school's senior class advisers, they started brainstorming last month for ways to get seniors some pomp, despite the circumstance. But the idea of standing 6 feet apart on a football field, or parading graduates past the school for a social-distanced salute didn't cut it. Eventually, they came up with another, more novel idea — to hold graduation at a venue about an hour north of the school. Within a day, they drove up to visit, fell in love with the

Most of us have the best of intentions when we graduate from high school or college to make our way in the world and lead meaningful and productive lives. But the minutiae of everyday life can eat into our plans to exist outside our comfort zone. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern...

The pandemic has shut down graduation celebrations across nation. On Tuesday, Facebook and Instagram announced plans to celebrate this year's graduating class with a streaming event on May 15, featuring Oprah Winfrey as commencement speaker.

More than a dozen Year 12 students from a prestigious Adelaide high school are banned from attending their graduation after tables were burnt and doors were glued shut.

Give it up for the class of 2020.

This is definitely required viewing.

Josh Kelly suffered from epilepsy, a brain disorder that forced him to drop out of high school nine days before graduation. For nearly a decade, Kelly attended Idaho State University working toward a degree in geology, with his service dog, a black pit bull named Cletus, by his side. The pair would dutifully walk two miles both ways to catch the bus to campus.

Unfortunately, Kelly passed away in February just two classes shy of his degree. Nonetheless, ISU granted him a posthumous degree on May 10. In the young man's place, Kelly's tearful father, Terrell, walked across the stage with Cletus by his side and accepted the diploma.

Don's High school Graduation from St Barbara Junior School2005 8 9 don's graduation 5 28 05 8AM to 10AM and Europe trip 8 9 05 1 of 10ltbr clearnone gt