Back to School, Decades Later

Imagine walking into an undergraduate philosophy class and finding an 85-year-old retiree debating an 18-year-old freshman. As colleges try to reverse enrollment declines, Goucher College has turned to a surprising group of students: senior citizens.

A recent Wall Street Journal article highlights the college’s partnership with the neighboring Edenwald retirement community, where retirees sit in on college courses right alongside young adults. It’s an unusual arrangement, and it’s gotten attention as a creative response to enrollment problems.

The Maryland liberal arts school has, in effect, widened its applicant pool in the opposite direction—instead of chasing the same shrinking group of 18-year-olds every other college is fighting over, it has opened its doors to people in their 70s, 80s, or 90s. The arrangement seems to work both ways. Retirees get to keep learning and stay mentally sharp, and younger students get classmates who bring decades of lived experience into the discussion. That kind of mix tends to change the texture of a classroom—conversations go deeper, and everyone involved probably comes away a little more well-rounded because of them. 

This solution’s benefits extend beyond mere enrollment. Retirees who spend real time on campus don’t just fill a seat for a semester—some of them stick around as donors, volunteers, or mentors. They bring decades of professional and personal experience that current students can draw on well past graduation, and those relationships could turn into genuine mentorship or networking down the line. 

Private colleges across the country are really struggling with enrollment, and this is one way to fill seats that would otherwise sit empty. It’s clear that the program would make classes richer in knowledge. The harder question is whether it can actually make a substantial impact on enrollment numbers at small private colleges over the long run. Can a few dozen retirees really help offset a shrinking population of traditional students?

Goucher’s version depends on having a retirement community right next door, full of residents who have both the free time and the money to take college classes. Take away either of those conditions, and it’s not clear other schools could replicate the same level of participation.

Moreover, Goucher’s experiment is arriving at a moment when a lot of colleges are staring down the same problem: there just aren’t as many traditional-age students as there used to be. Birth rates fell after the 2008 recession, and those smaller cohorts are now hitting college age. Tuition-dependent schools are panicking and looking for new ways to keep enrollment—and revenue—stable. Goucher is trying to get ahead of that by letting retirees into the classroom.

For North Carolina schools, the idea is intriguing but not exactly as simple. Elon University, Meredith College, and Guilford College all sit in areas with growing retiree populations, but none of them have a retirement community built into campus life the way Goucher does. 

The same is true for the state’s larger public schools. UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State sit in the Triangle, one of the fastest-growing retirement destinations in the country, yet neither has built anything resembling a connection between a retirement community and its classrooms. East Carolina, meanwhile, is located in eastern North Carolina, which has a notably older population. Yet that has thus far translated into continuing-education options rather than retirees enrolling alongside degree-seeking undergraduates.

Without the built-in, walking-distance partnership, it’s hard to see how another college would turn this from a nice idea into a dependable source of enrollment or money.

Goucher’s experiment isn’t going to solve higher ed’s enrollment crisis because senior citizens aren’t going to replace the steady flow of traditional undergraduates that most colleges still depend on. But it’s a useful reminder that colleges willing to think outside the box might find other opportunities. 

Reagan Allen is the North Carolina reporter for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.