At 71, Veteran Boston Newscaster Will Graduate from College

Jim Boyd, a veteran Boston anchorman and member of the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame, graduated from high school in 1958.

On May 19, he'll graduate from college, with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Tufts University.

"It only took 55 years to get here," Boyd said.

From college dropout to major-market news desk 

A familiar face to most Bostonians, Boyd, 71, spent 36 years as a reporter and anchor for WCVB, where he spent years delivering the morning news to viewers.

He got into television news after dropping out of Long Island University at the age of 19 and landing a job in the mailroom of National Education Television, a precursor to PBS.

In fact, Boyd had been put on academic probation. The Harlem native had graduated from high school at the age of 16, and he spent those three years of college communiting to school while living at home and hanging out with his friends, who were still in high school. It wasn't a recipe for success at college, Boyd explained.

"I just wasn't a very good student," he said.

As his job in the mailroom blossomed into a career in television news, "I tried to finish my education by going to night school," Boyd said.

Balancing a career and school wasn't easy. For instance, working as an associate producer for a TV show that spent a lot of time in foreign countries, Boyd would find himself faced with choices: Go to English class or travel to Paris to cover a summit.

Eventually, he decided to focus on his career, a choice he stuck to when he married and had a family.

"Always in the back of my mind"

But "it was always in the back of my mind, I need to finish," Boyd said about college. "I'm not going to say it nagged at me … but it certainly was something I hadn't forgotten."

In 2008, Boyd, after "a magnificent career," retired from television, and it seemed like the right time to finish his education.

Like many students embarking on a college career, the world-wise journalist suddenly found he wasn't so sure of himself.

"I always had doubts. Am I really capable of doing this?" he'd ask himself. In some ways, he still thought of himself as the guy who failed college, and it dredged up "a lot of sadness and regret."

No degree "just for being a nice guy"

After spending a semester at UMass, he learned through friends about Tufts' Resumed Education for Adult Learners program, which is for students 24 and older.

Some schools might have given him credit for all his professional experience and asked him to take a few courses before letting him graduate, but at Tufts "they weren't handing me a degree just for being a nice guy," Boyd said.

He had to fill out an application, dig up his old college credits, write application essays and "do it the same way everybody else was," he said.

He entered Tufts as a junior, but he took a lighter course load. Like most college students, he spent four years at school. And like many college students, he waited with trepidation for his final grade to be released, waking up at 5 a.m. to see if he passed and would graduate.

"I'll think I'm legitimate"

When he crosses the stage at commencement on May 19, "I'll feel exhilarated, and I do feel I have accomplished something. It wasn't easy," he said.

He added, "I'll think I'm legitimate. I did the work. I'm as deserving of this degree as anyone else sitting here."

In the audience during commencement will be his family: his wife, who has a master's degree, and his three daughters, one who graduated from Yale and has two masters' degrees, one who graduated from Georgetown and has a master's degree, and one who recently graduated from Cornell.

The 71-year-old will be the last in his family to don the cap and gown.

What next?

And, like many recent graduates, he's not entirely sure what he's going to do next. This summer he plans to "putter around in my back yard" and "ponder what my next move will be," he said.

"Something in my future will be giving back" he added.

That might involve working with kids in Boston's poorer neighborhoods, something he already does.

"I want to talk to these kids about how they can be successful," he said.

When he grew up in Harlem, his father was a postal worker, an uncle was a longshoreman. "There were no people in my family who had a college degree," he said. Conversation around the dinner table never focused on education; the focus was on getting a paying job. "The sights were set a little lower," he explained.

He'd like to speak with kids growing up in similar environments and tell them we shouldn't let external factors—race, family background, socioeconomic status, where you're from—"determine who we are and what we can be."