UC Davis student graduates nearly 50 years after starting. ‘It’s been conquered’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ronald Austin Jr. earned a UC Davis degree 47 years after starting college.
- Austin completed final seven units via internship focused on first-gen students.
- His story now serves as motivation for adults returning to finish their degrees.
As Ronald Austin Jr. walked into a UC Davis lecture hall in 1977, his freshman year, he experienced “culture shock.”
He was the only Black student in his class of more than 100. Austin, originally from Vallejo, said he had two options at the time: represent his community, or drop the class.
Austin said he talked to an academic adviser who essentially told him, as a solid football prospect, he would not have to worry about “the classes and stuff.”
”He said, you’re probably gonna be on probation at the end of the first quarter, and then at the end of the second quarter, you’ll be out of university,” Austin said.
The adviser didn’t know Austin earned mostly A’s and B’s in high school — and while the now-Fairfield resident said the university employee didn’t have malicious intent, he wanted to prove him wrong.
“Where I grew up, there was only one option. You gotta pass this class, and you gotta make everybody in here understand that you deserve to be here,” Austin said. “In the beginning, when you’re in a new place, you decide that you’re gonna conquer it and you do.
“Now, did the conquering take a long time? Yeah, but it’s been conquered.”
For Austin, it took just over 47 years to finish his degree. But on Saturday at Golden 1 Center, he will walk the stage, flip his tassel and receive a degree just like the other roughly 8,000 undergraduates.
Most of those other 8,000 will begin looking for jobs or internships. But for the retired Austin, now 66, it will signify the beginning of his new purpose: to encourage those in his situation to finish their degrees and help them to do so by telling his story.
“When you’re overconfident like I was, then you don’t utilize all the resources that are here to help you get out of college. Then if you happen to end up in a position where life starts to happen — not college life, life outside — and you haven’t finished and you haven’t taken advantage of every tool in here to finish to get out, then you’re gonna be like me,” Austin said. “I don’t want anybody to be like me.”
Seven units away
Austin, a 1986 inductee into the UC Davis Athletics Hall of Fame, was recruited to play football but the former running back, who was the first in his family to go to college, wanted to use the opportunity to support his mother who was raising seven kids alone.
He planned to use his bachelor’s degree in political science, which he will finally receive on Saturday, to go to law school, become an attorney and provide for his mom. But football got in the way.
In four seasons with the Aggies from 1977-80, Austin racked up more than 2,900 yards and 23 touchdowns, including his senior campaign where he became the first UC Davis player to rush for over 1,000 yards in a single season. He still has the third-most rushing yards and sixth-most yards from scrimmage in team history.
After his final year of eligibility, Austin hoped to continue his football career in the Canadian Football League. After bouncing between multiple teams, he didn’t make the cut and returned to the U.S. looking for a job.
Little did he know, he was just seven units shy of completing his degree.
“Getting a job and being able to help my mother was a No. 1 priority. It was the same priority that brought me to UC Davis,” Austin said. “Had I known it was just seven units, my mother would have been the first one (to say) ‘Get back in there’ and I can hear her right now.”
Aggie community opened doors
Austin described meeting his future wife, Deborah Thompson Austin, during his sophomore year as his favorite memory at UC Davis.
Thompson Austin was a part of the school’s Special Transitional Enrichment Program (STEP), a summer program that allows incoming freshmen to take six units before the school year begins to get familiar with the area and socialize with other new students. The football team, which Austin was a part of, was in the middle of summer practices and would often hang out with those in the STEP program, she said.
Austin remembered walking behind his future wife after practice one day and telling his friend Calvin Ellison, a former Aggie wide receiver who holds a plethora of kick-return records, that he would marry her one day. He had never even talked to her at that point.
While Thompson Austin said she “didn’t like him” at first and said he often wouldn’t socialize, after a “Romeo and Juliet type” dinner during that year’s fall, they got together. The two have been married since 1993.
On top of meeting his wife at UC Davis, Austin said he met multiple lifelong friends, many of whom traveled back to Davis to see him walk the stage Saturday.
Austin said being a former Aggie allowed him to have more career opportunities after coming back from Canada, despite not finishing his degree.
He said he was immediately placed on the management track at a drugstore upon returning and would later get a job as an appraisal coordinator — someone who reviews property-value estimates — despite having no experience in the field.
“I didn’t know anything about appraisals,” Austin said. “I was given an opportunity because I attended school here.”
Degree ‘legitimizes the story’
Thompson Austin, now vice president of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association, had been encouraging her husband to get his degree for years prior to his retirement in 2023. In 2017, she ordered his transcript but neither she nor her husband paid attention to the number of units he had left.
Neither found out how close he was to graduating until conversations with a member of the Office of Student Affairs at a 2024 UC Davis football game revealed the truth.
But at 66 years old, Austin said he wasn’t interested in attending traditional classes with much younger students, so the Student Transition and Retention Program, which works with first-generation college students to help them complete their degrees, created a specialized internship so he could complete his requirements.
The internship required Austin to write a research paper on first-generation college students and speak to classes about his experiences. Austin said without the program, he likely never would have completed his degree.
“The internship that they created allowed me to do this,” Austin said. “I’m not the only one that could do that and I hopefully am gonna be able to talk to a lot of people about that and get them back in here.”
Thompson Austin, who will be a part of the group leading the class of 2025 in the ceremonial tassel flip, among other duties, said she is very proud of her husband not only for completing the degree, but for being able to inspire those in similar positions to do the same.
“It’s that sense of completion, completing something that I know he really wanted to do for a while, but life happened,” Thompson Austin said. “Now they’re calling saying, ‘How can I do this?’”
At first, Austin didn’t want to walk the stage and was content with receiving his diploma, his wife said. But after some convincing, he said it is an “invaluable” part of his story.
“It legitimizes the story,” Austin said. “For all of the people who are in the same position that I was, I’ve got a little bit of advice for you: Find out what you need to do if you don’t know … the university will work with you.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
