Why are more seniors going back to college?

TEMPE, ARIZ. — On a sweltering, 100-degree morning in Tempe, Arizona, Roger Weinreber made his way across the street from his apartment to the woodworking studio on the campus of Arizona State University.

“Hi, Roger!” a young woman wearing a striped crop top and olive cargo shorts said as he walked in. “Nice to see you!”

“Good to see you,” he replied. He set a black wire sculpture he had made down on a wooden table covered with long brown boxes and orange and blue spring clamps.

A handful of the class’ 11 students had already gathered, and he walked around, chatting with them. But Weinreber isn’t a student. He’s their teaching assistant — who celebrated his 80th birthday.

“The students love Roger,” said Damon McIntyre, an instructor for that morning’s advanced wood shop class, whom Weinreber has worked with for the past 2½ years. “He’s such an asset.”

Weinreber is one of 373 residents at Mirabella, a retirement community that opened at Arizona State in 2020. They live in the heart of campus in a 20-story high rise and take classes, attend athletic and performing arts events, sit on thesis committees and help international students practice their English skills.

For retirees, university retirement communities offer the option to indulge their passion for lifelong learning in an environment that allows for intergenerational interaction with younger students.

Since the 1990s, at least 86 of these communities have opened across the country, including the Village at Penn State in State College, Penn.; University Commons at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Vi at Palo Alto at Stanford University in California. There has been a particular boom in the past 15 years, said Andrew Carle, an adjunct lecturer on aging and health issues at Georgetown University, who developed a website to track them.

“Some of us are looking at 20, 30 more years,” said Carle, 66. “So we want to do something other than just play another round of golf.”

Many Mirabella residents, all of whom are at least 62, volunteer as teaching and lab assistants; participate in the university’s pen pal program, which pairs them with college-age students; or serve as informal mentors, allowing them to pass on the knowledge they’ve acquired in their careers to the next generation, said Lindsey Beagley, 42, Arizona State’s senior director of lifelong university engagement. Approximately 80% hold at least a master’s degree, and 19% are retired university faculty.

That’s not to say they don’t still get first-day-of-school jitters.

“I took a Spanish class last semester, and it was me and 12 teenagers who were 18, 19. I thought, ‘Oh, how’s this going to go?’ But they were all very friendly and respectful and engaging,” said Cindy Adams, 76, a former regional CEO for the American Red Cross who moved into a two-bedroom apartment at Mirabella with her husband, Bill Adams, 78, last fall.

University retirement communities appeal to the baby boomer generation, people born between 1946 and 1964, because it is not only one of the most well-educated, but the most social, Carle said. It also helps that boomers — who make up approximately 20% of the U.S. population — control more than half the nation’s wealth.

Indeed, one of the biggest advantages to a university of having a retirement community on or near its campus is financial, Carle said, citing revenue from land leases, name and licensing rights, contract services such as medical staff and shared services such as food, maintenance, security and transportation.

At a “highly integrated” university retirement community, he said, these benefits can exceed $2 million per year, often for land or space that was not otherwise being used.

Entry fees at Mirabella start at $490,600, on top of monthly fees that start at $5,541. The most expensive unit, the deluxe two-bedroom penthouse on the 20th floor with a den and a mountain view, goes for $8,838 per month, plus an entry fee exceeding $1 million. By contrast, the median cost for independent senior living in Arizona is about $2,700 a month. The entry fee is 80% refundable to residents or their estate if they leave the community.

“Baby boomers did well for themselves, and now they’re willing to spend,” Carle said.

That was Cindy Adams’ thinking.

“We had to raise our budget about $100,000,” said Adams, who said Mirabella’s full spectrum of continuing care, including assisted living and memory care units, was a selling point. “But you save your whole life, and then there’s a time to spend.”

For Adams, the draw was not only the variety of classes offered, but the opportunity to live among younger students and participate in campus activities.

“It’s almost like working full time again with all the things that we’re involved in here,” said Adams, who edits an online newsletter for the university retirement community, chairs its welcome committee and acts in its drama group.

She also volunteers twice a month with the school’s friendship bench program, in which older adults offer a listening ear to anyone who approaches. Those days have been especially rewarding.

Even residents who don’t seek out students find them in their midst: Many are employed at Mirabella, where about 70 students work as technology assistants, valets, and health care and dining employees, as well as in other roles. Four music, dance or theater graduate students each year are afforded free housing in the community in exchange for giving regular performances.

For students like Caleb Bailey, a doctoral student studying classical guitar performance who is the artist-in-residence program coordinator, the recitals are an opportunity to not only experiment, but to do so for an enthusiastic audience.

“There’s been a really good turnout for all our concerts so far,” Bailey, 27, said of the hourlong performances, which can attract more than 200 residents. “It’s motivating to have so many people attend and to know that they appreciate it so much.”

There has also been concern that the presence of older adults on campus would kill the vibe at universities like Arizona State, which has long had a party school reputation. In fact, in 2022, the senior living community sued an on-campus bar and concert venue, Shady Park, asserting that its noise levels were excessive. (The suit was later settled, and the case was dismissed. Shady Park closed in August.)

For Bailey, though, his experiences at Mirabella “have fundamentally changed the way I view making music and community.” He is working to create a nonprofit that partners with retirement communities and university music programs to create musician-in-residence positions.

“It’s great that they’re keeping their brains active,” she said.

It remains to be seen whether university retirement communities (URCs) will prove as popular with future generations of retirees, Carle said. Technology, he said, will make it easier for them to live alone and still have their daily needs met.

“Whether that’s good or bad is for social scientists to assess, but it could result in less of a need to physically gather in any singular location, including a URC,” he said.

For now, though, communities like Mirabella are booming. As of mid-October, 94% of its independent-living apartments were either reserved or being lived in, with the community on track to be full by the end of next summer, said Tom Dorough, 59, the executive director of Mirabella. (Deluxe two-bedroom apartments with dens are the most popular.)

For engaged residents like Weinreber, the teaching assistant, going to school forever — and learning just as much, if not more, from his mentees as he imparts — is a dream.