By Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Nina M. Silverstein, Joann M. Montepare, and Lauren Bowen

With changes in enrollments occurring nationwide, higher education faces significant challenges in the years ahead. How colleges and universities approach these challenges will determine their ability to survive, particularly when combined with inflationary pressures and cuts in funding.

More than economics affect the future of higher education. Demographic changes are as well: Not only are there larger numbers of older adults, but they are also living longer and healthier lives. There are ample demographic data showing that these individuals seek opportunities to enhance their lives by furthering or restarting their education. Yet, significant challenges remain in making these opportunities available. Higher education is designed to serve the educational, social, and personal needs of the so-called “traditional-age” (18- to 22-year-old) student. What’s more, ageism remains prevalent in academia, affecting not only faculty and staff but also “non-traditional-age” (25 years and older) students who do not fit the typical mold of the average undergraduate.

Tackling ageism on a global level, the United Nations declared 2021-2030 as the Decade of Healthy Ageing. Aligned with Sustainable Development Goals, this movement is being implemented through the World Health Organization. A key piece of these efforts is the creation of “age-friendly environments,” intended to “improve the lives of older people, their families, and the communities in which they live.” The age-friendly environment movement can be seen in such areas as age-friendly communities and healthcare. In 2015, Dublin City University established the Age-Friendly University (AFU) Network, with the goal of expanding this movement to higher education.  The AFU Network, now known as AFU_GN, now includes over 115 institutions that have committed to advancing its 10 principles to make higher education more accessible to older learners and enhancing intergenerational interactions. University of Massachusetts Boston joined the AFU_GN in 2017, and in 2019, the entire UMass System endorsed the AFU principles, becoming the first system-wide member of the AFU_GN.

Beginning with the framework provided by the AFU_GN, UMass Boston’s Professor Nina Silverstein embarked on an audit of age-friendly campus practices in 2017. Enlisting fellow faculty members Susan Whitbourne (Gerontology), Associate Professor Lauren Bowen (English), undergraduate and graduate students, and members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), Silverstein developed an interview-based instrument to assess practices on campus, such as intergenerational programs and services provided to non-traditional and older students, including classroom accommodations. Analyses of these interviews led to the development of a more comprehensive tool that incorporated a wider range of programs beyond the original AFU principles. This effort expanded to include Lasell University’s Professor Joann Montepare. What began as an audit then developed into a two-part assessment instrument, capturing both the presence of age-friendly practices (Inventory) and awareness of these practices (Campus Climate) among the three campus constituencies of faculty, staff, and students.

This assessment instrument, later given the name Age-Inclusive Inventory and Campus Climate Survey (ICCS), expanded the AFU principles to incorporate seven key domains of higher education, ranging from personnel practices to teaching and learning. The ICCS rested on the assumptions that all members of the campus community should be included in an assessment of age-friendly practices and that what a campus offers as a “practice” may not be perceived by the people who work and live on that campus. Additionally, the ICCS is intended to serve as a benchmark that a campus can use to measure its progress toward meeting age-friendly principles.

Empirical testing of the ICCS expanded from an initial study of the UMass system campuses to an RRF-funded national survey of 23 AFU_GN campuses that agreed to complete the ICCS and share their data with the UMB-based research team. After identifying three high-impact high-need areas through this empirical test, the research team moved on to a second RRF-funded study to identify empirically based strategies to advance age-friendly efforts in these areas.  A third RRF-funded study then allowed the research team to develop dissemination tools to be used within higher education contexts more generally, beyond the AFU_GN network.

In the process of refining the ICCS model and these empirically based strategies, the UMass team adopted the more general terminology of “age-inclusivity” rather than “age-friendly.” The resulting Age-Inclusivity Domains in Higher Education (AIDHE) model now informs the team’s continued efforts to incorporate the original AFU principles into the broader context of diversity in higher education.

The AIDHE model is now incorporated into the work of the Gerontological Society of America’s Age Inclusivity in Higher education (AIHE) work group, reflecting this shift into age-inclusivity from age-friendliness. At the same time, consistent with the goals of the RRF-funded studies, the team has developed and made available online resources to allow other institutions to adapt the ICCS for their own use. These include the following two webinars:

Additionally, the ICCS and its scoring manual now are made available through these resources developed by the team.

These efforts continue to pave the way not only for more empirical research in the field, but also toward enhancing the lives of increasingly age-diverse constituencies of students, faculty, and staff. Tackling ageism in higher education remains a significant challenge, but with these efforts, a process already taking hold across the globe will only continue to advance the progress that campuses can make toward greater age inclusivity.