Graduation Event versus Education Fact

[Michael Friedman]

When would you use one versus the other?

I started the tree more than a decade ago and Education was a default Fact field. The problem is that I have been terribly inconsistent in the way I format what I've entered and I want to put in place a more disciplined consistent method of entry that also facilitates easy searches and reporting of who graduated from a particular university or all family members who graduated from the same high school by year.

For my mom I entered: Bachelor of Arts, Indiana University (1967); Master of Science, University of Nebraska at Omaha (1975)

For myself I entered: BA (History) Bradley University 12/1994, MA (Political Philosophy) Hull University 1/1997, MBA (Marketing) Indiana State University 6/2002

It has occurred to me that really what I've been recording in the Education Fact field are actually Graduation Events with additional information like major and degree.

Although A LOT of work, I'm thinking about creating several Graduation Event fields to record high school and each college or graduate degree. But that leaves me with the lingering question - if you were to take the route of recording the type of information I've got above for me or my mom (for example) in the Graduation Event field, what would you use the Education Fact field for?

[Ryan_N]

In simple terms, genealogical facts listed in the Events tab, in Reunion, have a column for a date to be entered.

And in equally simple terms, not every collegiate student earns a degree. Prior to WWII, it's quite interesting to my how frequent college drop-outs occurred during third and even fourth year of baccalaureate degree studies.

Though I'm of the belief it's good practice to enter a "before [date]" for pretty much any event entered in the database, others might have a different view. (If the date field were left blank, it might be easier to query of the database for events entered without dates---and doing so, might provide the necessary reminder to chase-down a better source---one that has the piece information we needed (a date!).

Hope that helps.