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In an episode of this season of Hacks, the Emmy-winning intergenerational comedy, the older comedian Deborah Vance returns to her alma mater (UC Berkeley) to receive an honorary degree. Shortly after arriving, a video containing offensive jokes she delivered early in her career goes viral. Students protest, the university ceremony honoring her is scrubbed, and, boom, she’s canceled.
The episode aired as real-world generational tensions were playing out on campuses throughout the country (including UC Berkeley), regularly pitting student protesters against their elders in the university administration or among schools’ donors. It’s a drama echoing the older-younger battles that characterized Baby Boomers’ own college experiences in the 1960s and 1970s. And it reinforces the notion of universities as a place characterized by tensions between generations.
But what if the opposite were true? What if universities were an epicenter of understanding between generations, the place where older and younger people came to learn and to learn from each other? It could–and should–happen for so many reasons, including three entangled demographic and economic ones.
First, the declining number of young people is driving an “enrollment cliff” for many universities, forcing the closure of schools across the country.
Second, longer lives are fueling a rise in campus programs for older students, including encore education programs and university-based retirement communities.
And third, we’re living in a time of unprecedented age diversity. According to the Stanford Center on Longevity, roughly the same number of people are alive at every age from birth to 75. This year, a quarter of the population is under 20, and a quarter is over 60.
These forces call for revolutionary change, but missing so far is a single substantially-realized example of a university fully leaning into age diversity in creative and comprehensive ways, a school that consciously sees itself preparing people of all ages to thrive in the multigenerational future already upon us.
That doesn’t mean we have to start from scratch. There are many promising but small-scale innovations popping up around the country and the globe. And we’re beginning to see the emergence of a bigger vision for what the future might look like.
Professor Nancy Morrow-Howell at Washington University St. Louis, for example, has put forth the notion of Wash U for Life and co-authored a compelling case setting out the benefits of a truly age-integrated incarnation for higher education, one that infuses the power of age-diversity and intergenerational connection into every aspect of university learning and life. (Also see The Emergence of Long Life Learning and Enrollment Cliff, Meet Longevity Revolution for more compelling ideas).
Now is the time to realize this vision, not only for the continued economic viability of universities, but for the thriving of an age-diverse America. We need to go beyond fiddling around the edges to crafting the wholesale reinvention of higher education.
REGISTER NOW for Reimagining Your Next Chapter: A Fireside Chat with Marc Freedman of ELI and Chip Conley of MEA, August 22, 2024, 1pm ET / 4pm PT. Attendance is free but registration is required.
