Curious: How many students have graduated from Harper College since its inception?
Board members and graduates celebrate together at Harper College’s second commencement in 1970. (Photo courtesy of Harper Archives.)
Harper College has awarded 92,068 total degrees since its opening in 1967, according to Interim Senior Director of Enrollment Services/Registrar Sue Skora.
The very first Harper College graduate earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1968, and they were the only student to graduate that year.
The most popular degrees are transfer degrees, more specifically the Associate of Arts degree and the Associate of Science degree.
The 2020-2021 school year had the largest number of graduates in the history of Harper College with 4,500 degrees awarded. This graduation number was higher than the 3,900 degrees awarded during the previous 2019-2020 school year.
According to Skora, the Covid-19 pandemic prevented some students from finishing on time in 2020.
“With Covid…we just weren’t sure what it was going to look like because some of our programs couldn’t go to clinicals — couldn’t complete some of their courses,” Skora said. “They had to get incompletes to complete once the hospitals opened up and things like that.”
