Kelly Ripa inspired by her children, plans return to college: “I want to get my degree”

When your youngest child gets ready to toss his graduation cap in the air, it tends to make you reflect. For Kelly Ripa, that reflection turned into something a little unexpected—a decision to return to college.
On the April 17 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, Ripa shared that her 22-year-old son Joaquin is about to graduate from the University of Michigan. “We keep begging him to go to grad school,” she said with a laugh, clearly still wrapping her head around how quickly time has passed. “It’s hard to believe he’s already graduating.”
That milestone sparked something inside Ripa, something that had been quietly tucked away since 1990. That year, she left Camden County Community College to chase a dream—a dream that took her straight into America’s living rooms as Hayley Vaughan on All My Children. She never looked back… until now.
With Joaquin about to close one chapter, Ripa is thinking of opening one she left unfinished. “My whole thing is—I want to go to college. I want to go to a four-year university, and I want to get my degree in something,” she said on the show, her voice carrying both excitement and vulnerability.
Mark Consuelos, her husband and cohost, offered a playful push. “Now that he’s going to be out, you should go to school and he won’t be weirded out by his mom being in class.”
Ripa smiled. “I should go into broadcast—that’s an easy A,” she joked, her self-deprecating humor fully intact. “I’ll go into communications!”
But she quickly followed it up with a laugh. “I probably wouldn’t ace it. On Live, we’ve probably learned what they teach not to do.”
It was a lighthearted moment, but beneath the jokes was something quietly profound. For all her success—years of television, a star on the Walk of Fame, an iconic morning show career—there’s still a part of Kelly Ripa that wants to finish what she started.
And maybe that’s the point. It’s not about needing a degree. It’s about growth. It’s about setting an example. It’s about coming full circle.