Bruce Wayne's College Education Comes to Light After Dark Knight Director's Address at Princeton
ByThe filmmaker to most recently bring Batman to the big screen revived an old debate as to where the caped crusader's alter ego attended college.
Speaking at Princeton University's 2015 Class Day, Christopher Nolan encouraged graduates by telling them they did something Bruce Wayne did not: earn a bachelor's degree from the New Jersey Ivy League school.
"Yes, he attended Princeton but he didn't graduate," NJ.com quoted Nolan, the director of the "Dark Knight" trilogy, telling the group of seniors.
Nolan was chosen by a vote from those seniors to speak at their Class Day, which precedes Princeton's commencement ceremony. Many members of the graduating class reportedly wore Batman character masks to the University Chapel for the event.
Before giving way to Nolan, Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber told the seniors part of Nolan's appointment was to address Bruce Wayne's academic career. But Eisgruber brought forward what he called "incontrovertible proof" that Wayne is a Princeton alumnus.
According to Princeton's website, Eisgruber called the school's archivist, Dan Linke, to bring forth the heir to the Wayne fortune's "alumni records." Eisgruber said Wayne trained with the Mighty Tigers martial arts group, recruiting some to help him fight crime.
But the orphaned son of Thomas and Martha Wayne has ties to another Ivy League institution: Yale University. The Yale Alumni Magazine has published multiple articles on the subject and with solid evidence.
As Vulture pointed out in March, 2011, an old Batman comic shows a plaque on Wayne's wall that appears to be a law degree from a Gotham City satellite campus of Yale. The Yale Magazine was not sure if the plaque appearing in 1974's "The Night of the Stalker" comic, so they contacted its cartoonist, who told them the plaque read "Yale."
Sal Amendola told the magazine Bruce Wayne would have wanted the law degree to act as a counterweight for Batman's status as a vigilante. The American Bar Association requires an undergraduate degree to earn a law degree, but the major does not necessarily matter.
Maybe Wayne left Princeton for a small suitcase school and got his degree quietly.