94-year old woman graduates college with a 4.0 GPA.

Amy Craton started college and slowly worked toward a degree until she was 40-years old. She stopped in 1962 when she divorced her husband, went back to work, and raised her children.

Now retired and living in Hawaii, Craton decided to finish her college degree at the age of 94.

Hard of hearing and confined largely to a wheelchair, Craton enrolled in online courses at Southern New Hampshire University for no other reason than she used to live in New England many years ago, so she felt nostalgic.

"I couldn’t see just sitting there watching Netflix all the time," she said in a video provided by SNHU.

Netflix has hit a new low when elderly people confined to their wheelchairs want nothing to do with you--but I digress.

Craton told The Today Show that the hardest part was finishing assignments before deadlines with the time difference between Hawaii and New Hampshire, which required her to stay awake well past her bedtime. That said, she doesn't regret completing her degree.

"It feels good to graduate, to finish that part of my life," Craton told the university in a video they posted online. "But I feel that I’m still on the road."

SNHU president Paul LeBlanc flew from New Hampshire to Hawaii to personally deliver Craton her diploma and hold a surprise party.

And as for a graduate degree now? Oh, she's going for that now. No sense in stopping just because she's 94.

"As long as I get good grades, I’ll be happy," she said.

Getting good grades probably won't be a problem.




photo:  Diana Bowen / Southern New Hampshire University

Hawaii needs to hire 1,600 teachers and is recruiting on the mainland for them.

Good news for SPAM fans and Don Ho enthusiasts: Hawaii needs to hire 1,600 teachers for the upcoming school year and has begun recruiting on the mainland United States for such personnel

Why? Because no one wants to teach in Hawaii.

It's true! Being a state made up of islands in the middle of an ocean limits the potential recruitment of future teachers just from a geographical sense, and paying teachers below the median national salary for the position doesn't much help matters. As a result, Hawaii often goes to the mainland United States to recruit more teachers every year.

Except that mainland recruitment often fails as well because of Hawaii's extremely high cost-of-living doesn't coincide well with being an underpaid teacher. Added into the mix of problems is that most recruits find themselves assigned to rural schools, which make up 16% of all schools on the islands.

So far Hawaii's recruiting efforts have focused on cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and, uh, Newark. One can only assume people might be so desperate to leave Newark they'll take anything available.

Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, tells Hawaii News Now it's never getting better. "[Mainland recruits] say, 'I can't live here' and they leave and we have to go back and recruit, and this cycle just continually happens."

And you thought SPAM was an acquired taste. Turns out the whole state of Hawaii is.