Rockers with Degrees

Welcome back to school! If you’re student living for punk rock and thinking school is underrated – just remember that Dexter Holland is a punk rocker with a PhD. You can have it all! Stay in school! It’s cool.

Rock out to this and you’ll be SMRT.

DEXTER HOLLAND

Dexter Holland graduated from high school as valedictorian in 1984. During that time, he was the best student in his math classes – a subject he says to find “just as exciting as punk rock”. He later attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a BS in biology and both a MS and PhD in molecular biology.

In 2013, Holland served as a doctoral student at the Laboratory of Viral Oncology and Proteomics Research, Keck School of Medicine. He, along with co-authors, published a paper entitled “Identification of Human MicroRNA-Like Sequences Embedded within the Protein-Encoding Genes of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus”. Read it HERE.

Oh, and he’s a licensed Airline Transport Pilot and a Certified Flight Instructor who made a solo trip around the world in ten days. NO BIG DEAL.

RIVERS CUOMO

While growing up in the spiritual monastery of Yogaville (yes, really), Cuomo attended a private elementary school. Later, his family relocated to a monastery outside Virginia where he attended the highly regarded E.O. Smith High School. Following the massive success of Weezer’s debut The Blue Album, Cuomo felt burnt out and did the only logical thing – he enrolled in Harvard. He ended up dropping out to record and tour Pinkerton, but re-enrolled and graduated in 2008 with a BA in English Literature.

TOM MORELLO

The Rage Against the Machine guitarist comes from a long line of smarty pants. His mom earned a Master of Arts from Loyola University and taught English in Germany, Spain, Japan and Kenya before teaching high school American history. She taught both her son and Adam Jones of Tool.  Morello’s father was a Kenyan participant in the Mau Mau Uprising and served as Kenya’s first ambassador to the United Nations. Morello’s paternal great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first elected president in Kenyan history.

After graduating high school with honors, he enrolled at Harvard as a political science student. He graduated with a BA degree in Social Studies – and really worked for it. Morello worked as an exotic dancer to support himself, going by Tom “Meat Swinger” Morello.

THOM YORKE

Yorke and fellow members of Radiohead all attended Arbingdon School before enrolling in Exeter University. Yorke studied English and Fine Arts. The internet doesn’t tell us much about his time at university, but it’s safe to assume he learned things.

COLDPLAY

Chris Martin and Johnny Buckland met at orientation week at the University College London in September 1996. They later met up with classmate Guy Berryman and Martin’s childhood friend Phil Harvey, who was studying classics at the University of Oxford. Harvey began acting as the band’s manager and has been considered Coldplay’s fifth member ever since. The band was complete when they scooped up Will Champion for percussion. They ended up stealing the name Coldplay from another classmate who was using it for his band. Martin graduated with a degree in Ancient World Studies.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

All three members of Vampire Weekend studied at Columbia University. Frontman Ezra Koenig earned a BA in English Literature from Columbia. Following graduation, he taught through Teach for America at Junior High School 258. Drummer Chris Tomson also graduated from Columbia, studying economics and music.

GREG GRAFFIN

The Bad Religion frontman attended the University of California and graduated with a double-major in anthropology and geology. He then went on to earn a master’s degree in geology UCLA and received a PhD in zoology from Cornell University. Ya know, just everyday rock star stuff. His thesis was entitled “Evolution, Monism, Atheism, and the Naturalist World-View: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology“. Since graduating, he has returned to both UCLA and Cornell to teach classes on evolution.