A few minutes’ walk from the green and leafy campus based around the historic buildings of Davidson College in North Carolina, Hansford Epes sits in the airy reception room of The Pines, a retirement complex that has allowed him to extend the best parts of his long academic life.
Upstairs, residents file out of the latest in a series of talks by Davidson College faculty. Along the corridor, former officials and alumni are having lunch together in the Heritage restaurant. The Pines’ 300 members have access to the college’s facilities and activities, mix with its students and staff, and use the surrounding shops and services.
Across its 150-acre campus, between landscaped gardens, there are apartments in blocks, a number of clustered villas with up to three bedrooms and standalone larger cottages, as well as an on-site fitness room, pool, art studio and assisted living for those in greater need of nursing support.
Epes, 84, who for more than four decades taught German at Davidson and was then its registrar, is appreciative of a community that wants to remain intellectually active. “It’s a wonderful group of people who didn’t check their brains when they came through the door. They are not going to curl up in a corner and wait,” he says. He moved in after a few years living in his own nearby house. “I resisted until I needed the support. I regret that I waited.”
The Pines was a pioneer in what has grown to become an important trend in the US: retirement communities connected to universities. They bring together two very different age groups that have traditionally led separate and highly segregated lives: full-time campus-based students in higher education, and those who have long quit working life. The mutual benefits range from socialising to funding, as societies age and US colleges suffer from falling admissions.
The Pines complex was first conceived in the late 1980s by the Presbyterian church, which had founded Davidson in 1837, in part for the widows of academics and ministers. Today it is, as another resident quips, “the place where Davidson presidents come to die” (four former presidents live or have lived there). But, like other such communities that it has since inspired, it is home not only to college staff, alumni and their relatives, but also retirees with no prior connection to Davidson or the church.
Andrew Carle, 65, a former healthcare chief executive who now works as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University in Washington DC, travelled across the US with his wife and child at the start of the millennium researching the phenomenon and coined the term “university-based retirement communities”. He has catalogued more than 85 to date — from small colleges to elite ones linked to Duke, Princeton and Stanford — housing thousands of Americans, and expects that number to double in the next 10-15 years. He has also fielded inquiries from college administrators in Australia, Korea, Japan and China looking to emulate the concept.
He cites research by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer in her 2009 book Counterclockwise, that suggests that by creating a “reminiscence bump” for residents of their own past college experiences, university-based communities may even help to “reverse” ageing. “You are as young as you feel. If you put people in their past environments,” he says, they can feel “physically and intellectually younger”. Some “ageing in community” research suggests intergenerational settings improve wellbeing for the elderly.
“They say 80 is the new 60, and it is,” says Carle. “I don’t think I’m old and no one in our generation does. We’re different to the ones in the past who looked on life in retirement as going to ‘elderly islands’ and doing the four Bs: bingo, Bible, birthdays and bridge. We want active, intellectually stimulating, intergenerational retirement. That’s a college campus.”
Such living arrangements are not cheap, though their advocates argue they are comparable with other forms of assisted living. In most cases, residents pay an upfront membership fee and a monthly charge covering rent, food and facilities depending on the size of their accommodation.
At The Pines, prices start with an entrance fee of $55,000 and a monthly charge of $3,255 for a studio of 418 square feet. A two-bedroom clapboard villa with balcony is $598,000 and $7,830 a month. At The Woodlands, an upscale retirement community linked to Furman University in South Carolina, another programme Carle praises, the price starts at $290,000 joining fee, then $3,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, rising to $1.4mn and $8,350 for a three-bedroom villa.
The Pines works partly because of its non-profit structure and its tradition — like that of Davidson College more widely, with its fiercely loyal alumni — rooted in community-based philanthropy. Regular donations have allowed it to expand and add facilities such as a swimming pool over the years. The Woodlands is also not for profit.
Carle says that colleges derive income from their retirement communities in a range of ways including service fees, rent on leased land, royalties and very occasionally as a direct investor. But he cautions against the latter because of both the liabilities linked to elderly care and the complexities of negotiations.
Carle also warns that the operational models and services provided vary widely. It is one reason he launched a quality certification programme late last year (universityretirementcommunities.com), which stipulates that approved institutions must be walkably close to the host university; a 10th of the residents should be alumni or retired faculty and staff to ensure strong connections; there should be a formal relationship and programming with the college; and a continuum of services from independent living to skilled nursing care must be available.
The first to go through his process — and score top marks — was Mirabella, housed a few minutes’ walk from Arizona State University’s campus in Tempe. Lindsey Beagley, senior director for life-long university engagement, says: “This model is challenging the American cultural idea of retirement. We think of it as age-segregated and geographically isolated. Arizona’s own Sun City [a 40,000-strong purpose-built retirement community near Phoenix launched in 1960] is the poster child for that. We are in many ways the reverse. We shot ourselves in the foot by age-segregating the most experienced people in our society who have the skills, knowledge, time and resources to support the next generation.”
The model will not appeal to everyone. Beagley says four-fifths of Mirabella’s 300 residents have at least a masters degree, and a third have some prior connection to ASU. Many more do not, such as Jessica Kozloff, 83. But she was a professor and university president who upon retirement, first moved elsewhere in Arizona with her physician husband for the warmth and proximity to a golf course. “We enjoyed that for a while, but as we got older, we weren’t playing so much,” she says.
Two years ago, they moved into Mirabella. “It’s an opportunity to be around people who share life-long learning,” she says. “It’s great fun to walk the campus, to go to cafés, shops, the library. You get a student ID card, can take classes, and enjoy plays and musical events. It’s invigorating. I’m young in spirit and I really believe this keeps me young.”
Mirabella soars skywards, an ultra-modern glass tower block with big windows overlooking the ASU campus, filled with one and two-bedroom apartments. Residents can personalise their living spaces including painting, flooring or cabinetry in co-ordination with the staff. Entry fees start from $476,300 for a one-bedroom apartment, with monthly fees from $5,232 — these include remote and in-person classes, ASU ID student campus card, tickets to ASU sporting events and access to ASU libraries.
Kozloff particularly values the intergenerational links. “It’s a way of connecting with young people. Regardless of how chaotic our life gets, this interchange keeps me optimistic.” She and other residents regularly mentor students, prepare them for interviews and sit on a bench on campus beneath a sign reading “ask me anything”.
Whatever the benefits for their elders, many students might instead prefer to fully exploit their newfound freedom away from watchful adult eyes. But Michael Robinson, who is completing his PhD in music at ASU, is one of four in his faculty who live in Mirabella with board and lodging provided for free in order to forge deeper intergenerational connections. In exchange, they give a weekly performance, and often additional lectures and events — in his case, “the pluck club”, with the ukulele and guitar.
“Residents come to me and say they are so lucky to have this programme,” he says. “My response is that we, the students, have the better deal: we get to live here, and have an automatic network of people who have lived full lives. They sit me down, ask me about my next steps, and hold me accountable. You might imagine most [young people] would shy away from living with people who are 62 years old plus. But they are fun to hang out with.”
Ezra Hall was a student a decade ago at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He was so inspired by its “adopt a grandparent” programme at its affiliated Woodlands retirement community that he stayed on after graduating. He is now its director of philanthropy and engagement.
“I went out to dinner once a month with my ‘grandmother’, I used her apartment to study in, and she really became like a grandmother to me. I’d go to church with her and celebrate birthdays if I wasn’t able to go home for a holiday. Woodlands took me under its wing,” he says. “The residents all invested in my growth.”
Such extensive intergenerational bonds outside of families may be relatively uncommon, and the degree to which students and retirees mix certainly varies widely between institutions. So do the broader educational programmes on offer. Some universities allow retirees to “audit” or even take college classes for credit and exams. Many more have a looser system of talks, or work through networks such as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, which support lecture series specifically for retirees at campuses across the US.
But the scale of university-based retirement communities varies widely, and affects what is available. Larger colleges may have more facilities including university hospitals and medical centres, but their profile and popularity — among not only students, but also alumni and state residents — means access to prestige events such as campus American football and basketball matches may be restricted. By contrast, smaller and more remote colleges may lack critical mass or resources.
Dave Johnson came to The Woodlands at Furman with his wife more than 15 years ago, drawn by the music, sports teams and golf course, as well as to seek better weather and be rid of home maintenance obligations.
“There’s a trade-off. It’s a hard decision to give up your house and move into a community environment. When you live somewhere with about 300 others, there are always compromises,” he says. “Nobody agrees with one hundred per cent of what goes on.” But, for him, “the pluses outweigh any negatives”.
The couple explored a range of different retirement options and had no prior connection to Furman. Now, they are so embedded in its activities that they have made a substantial bequest once death does them part. “We don’t have any kids. When we’re gone, we want the money to do some good. It wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t live here.”
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