Shaquille O’Neal just gave new meaning to the phrase “big man on campus.” The 7’1” former Miami Heat center graduated over the weekend from Barry University with a doctoral degree in Education (specifically, organizational learning and leadership with a specialization in human resource development). O’Neal has been working to complete his degree since 2006, reportedly studying during downtime from his job as an NBA analyst and between games. The soon-to-be Dr. Shaq even achieved a GPA of 3.813 and completed a capstone project entitled, “The Duality of Humor and Seriousness in Leadership Styles.” “Everyone thinks this is honorary. But this is not honorary,” O’Neal told the Miami Herald. “I put in four and a half hard years staying up late at night, studying, reading, rewriting papers Dr. Knopp marked up.” The basketball star has also dropped hints about his next ambition: “I think I’m going to try law school next. I think. We’ll see.”
Stephen Colbert, Northwestern
Stephen Colbert perfected his Method eyebrow raise as a theater major at Northwestern (’86) after transferring from Hampden-Sydney. The Comedy Central anchor once
described his college self as a “real poet-slash-jerk…I had a beard, and I wore black, and I was really willing to share my grief with you." Colbert’s
regimen was hardcore: dance in the morning at 9:00 a.m., water performance class, dramatic criticism, the history of costume and decor, and scene design. He also performed in experimental plays such as
Pelleas and Melisande by Maurice Maeterlinck in college before graduating to the Second City improv scene.
Natalie Portman, Harvard
Like Jodie Foster before her, Natalie Portman announced she was taking a Hollywood hiatus to go to an Ivy League school. Unlike Foster, who went to Yale, Portman enrolled in Harvard, where she pursued a psychology degree and worked as a research assistant for renowned law professor Alan Dershowitz. She still managed to film
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones during her summer break (although many fans would’ve preferred if she hadn’t) and
once said, “I don't care if [college] ruins my career….I'd rather be smart than a movie star.”
Michael Steele, Johns Hopkins
As the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele has had quite the balancing act. But young Michael struggled to balance academics with an active social life during his undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins, landing him in hot water with the school's administration. Unable to juggle a class presidency with fencing team duties and various dramatic pursuits, the university asked Steele to leave after his first academic year. Determined to earn his degree (and assuage his mother’s rage) Steele enrolled in summer courses at George Washington University and received straight A's, allowing him to return to Hopkins and ultimately complete his degree in International Relations by 1981.
Reese Witherspoon, Stanford
An actress from a young age, Reese Witherspoon had already appeared in several films before being accepted to Stanford University. Witherspoon had set her sights on an English major and her parents expected her to follow in their footsteps and study medicine. However, after one year, Witherspoon left Stanford to pursue acting full time.
Jon Favreau, College of the Holy Cross
Obama's speechwriter wunderkind Jon Favreau, got his start on the public service path while pursuing a degree in political science at the College of the Holy Cross. In his junior year, Favreau landed an internship in John Kerry's senate office, an experience that piqued his interest in politics and would pay big dividends. The day before Favreau graduated magna cum laude from Holy Cross in 2005, he got a call from the Kerry campaign and was hired as a press assistant. Favreau would meet Barack Obama the same year. Of course, Favreau's youth occasionally shows—he's only 27—as it did when an embarrassing
party photo of him and a cut-out of Hilary Clinton made the rounds on the Internet.
Robin Roberts, Southeastern Louisiana
Robin Roberts graduated cum laude from Southeastern Louisiana University in 1983 with a degree in communications. Born and raised in the Gulf Coast, Roberts not only excelled at academics, she dominated the basketball court as well. (She is in the third all-time leading scorer and rebounder for the Lady Lions.) All of which seems like excellent career preparation for Roberts, who had a successful career at ESPN before landing on the couch at
Good Morning America.
P. Diddy, Howard
Using college as a platform to launch his career, Sean Combs spend a good portion of his undergraduate days at Howard University commuting to New York City, where he interned for Heavy D’s upstart hip-hop label, Uptown Records. Meanwhile, back on Howard’s DC campus, the aspiring mogul became heavily involved in party promotion, acquiring a flair for marketing that would provide the foundation for his professional success. Within months, the artist soon to be known as P. Diddy shot up the ranks of the music industry, landing a promotion to A&R executive at the record label. Soon after abandoning Howard his sophomore year, Diddy left Uptown and founded Bad Boy Entertainment in 1993, securing his place amongst America's most successful dropouts.
Maria Shriver, Georgetown
Kennedys are expected to achieve and Maria Shriver has been no exception. Long before she became Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shriver honed her political skills at Georgetown University with a B.A. in American Studies. She graduated in 1977 and quickly parlayed her knowledge into a career as a newswriter and producer for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, before moving to CBS and NBC. Shriver put her news career on hold several years ago to be the First Lady of California and an author.
Bobby Jindal, Brown
Bobby Jindal graduated with honors from Brown University in 1991, with degrees in biology and public policy. After graduation, he turned down admissions to medical and law schools at Harvard and Yale to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. But while Jindal excelled academically there, his social life was more mysterious. He once
wrote in the New Oxford Review about his experiences in an exorcism in college that purged Satan from a girlfriend.
Rahm Emanuel, Sarah Lawrence
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has a reputation on Capitol Hill for being heavy-handed at atime, but he’s also the lightest on his feet. As a teenager, Emanuel chose to study dance at Sarah Lawrence College over admission in the Joffrey Ballet company, and graduated in 1981. He maintained quite the reputation on campus—one of his former girlfriends reflects: “He was a renaissance man. When I think of big man on campus, Rahm was that guy at Sarah Lawrence,” said Sarah Schwartz, adding, “He was not one of those people who breezed through life.” Emanuel went on to get a master’s degree in speech and communication from Northwestern University, but remembers his undergraduate time fondly,
saying, “The four years I spent [there] taught me that with hard work and dedication, anything can be accomplished.”
Mellody Hobson, Princeton
Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, was accepted at both Harvard and Princeton Universities. She chose the latter because of a connection with her interviewer: Ariel founder and Princeton grad John W. Rogers Jr. At Princeton, Hobson studied in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, and her senior thesis was entitled “Apartheid’s Unintended Consequence: The Politicization of Black Children in South Africa.” One summer vacation in college, Hobson worked at Ariel, and returned there when she graduated.
Meg Whitman, Princeton
If eBay had existed in 1977, when Meg Whitman graduated from Princeton, she would have been made an excellent CFO. The former CEO of the auction site graduated with a degree in economics, worked on the campus publication Business Today, and her senior thesis was titled “The Marketing of American Consumer Products in Western Europe.” Since graduation, Whitman has been an involved alumna. She has served as a University trustee, donated more than $30 million for a new residential college in her name, and her two sons are currently undergraduates there. "Princeton had an enormous impact on my life, helping to define the person I am today,"
she told The Daily Princetonian."
Sergey Brin, University of Maryland
Sergey Brin, one of the two brilliant minds behind Google, emigrated from Russia when he was six and later attended the University of Maryland, earning a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in mathematics and computer science in 1993. Brin then attended Stanford where he met cofounder Larry Page. While pursuing Ph.D.s in Computer Science, the pair began to develop Google, supposedly
"cramming their dormitory with cheap computers." They unveiled their research with a groundbreaking paper entitled
"The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Engine". Recognizing the significance of their work, the pair suspended their studies at Stanford to pursue their project full time. It’s paid off. In the billions.
Jeff Bezos, Princeton
Jeff Bezos arrived at Princeton wanting to study physics. He pursued it to a higher-level quantum mechanics class, where he was blown away by the abstract concepts. “One of the great things Princeton taught me is that I’m not smart enough to be a physicist,”
he said. He switched over to electrical engineering and computer science instead, and went to Wall Street to work in computer science after graduating in 1986. Turned out he picked the right major: Bezos founded Amazon shortly thereafter in 1994.
James Franco, UCLA
Actor James Franco can play comic book villains (Green Goblin in
Spider-Man) or hippie-haired pot smokers (
Pineapple Express), but for the past few years the 30-year-old thespian has undertaken another role—bookish English student at UCLA. He
carried Gertrude Stein to film sets, claims he took 62 units in one quarter, and finished his degree in English with a creative writing concentration last June. Despite immediately enrolling in Columbia’s master of fine arts writing program, UCLA students are
already protesting Franco’s proposed return to campus as commencement speaker with claims that he was merely “an average student” with photographic evidence of him napping during class as proof.
Kate Beckinsale, Oxford
Kate Beckinsale read Russian and French at New College at Oxford University. But according to her college newspaper
The Oxford Student, Beckinsale didn’t have too many friends there, and chose the theater over social engagements. Two years after starring in Kenneth Branagh’s
Much Ado About Nothing, however, Beckinsale dropped out of school to pursue acting.
David Plouffe, University of Delaware
Though he may hold the blueprints for electoral victory, the architect behind Barack Obama’s presidential campaign doesn’t even own a college diploma. Obama’s chief strategist, David Plouffe, left the University of Delaware after studying political science for three years to embark on Sam Beard’s U.S. Senate campaign in Iowa, where he would establish himself as a major player in the state's political scene. Plouffe’s Constitutional law professor at Delaware recalls confronting the young student about his academic disengagement: “He told me he was more interested in practical politics,” Jim Magee said. Plouffe spent the next three years building momentum in Iowa, where he worked on the various senate and presidential campaigns of Sen. Tom Harkin.
