Canada’s ‘age-friendly’ universities prioritize senior students

At 70, Cornelia Kauenhowen finally knows what she wants to be: a sociologist.

Her past careers — nurse, realtor, truck driver — never seemed to fit. Sociology “has really helped me to make meaning of my life,” she said.

Kauenhowen came to sociology later in life, after she and her husband retired from driving long-haul trucks. Like many seniors, she did not want to spend retirement idling away the hours in coffeeshops.

A friend suggested she attend university. She thought she was too old and doubted she could do the coursework. Her friend was not convinced by her objections, and soon Kauenhowen sent in an application.

In January 2018, at the age of 63, she began studies at the University of Manitoba. 

“It was everything I thought it would be,” she says enthusiastically. 

Kauenhowen was raised in a strict religious environment, where inquisitiveness was often discouraged and diverse opinions were not always welcomed. University is the opposite. Her sociology classes helped her understand the factors that impacted her upbringing and past choices. 

“I would go home from university, sometimes almost jumping up and down for joy because of what I was learning and how it was affecting me inside,” she said.

After earning an undergraduate sociology degree, she returned for her master’s. She is researching the experiences of university students in Manitoba who returned to school after the age of 55.

Kauenhowen thinks universities need to focus more on older adults and seniors. “The older population is growing, and we have so much to offer,” she said.

Many Canadian universities agree. Numerous Canadian post-secondary institutions have pledged to become age-friendly, meaning they are committed to promoting healthy aging and doing more with older adults.

“The university is a public institution,” said Shelley Canning, director of the Centre for Education and Research in Ageing at the University of the Fraser Valley, which has campuses and centres in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope and Mission, B.C. People often assume universities are filled with students who are in their late teens or early 20s, or professors who may be seniors, she says. “But it’s for everybody.”

In 2022, the University of the Fraser Valley became B.C.’s first university to receive Age-Friendly University accreditation through the Age-Friendly University Global Network. The network, founded in 2012 by Dublin City University in Ireland, is a global association of post-secondary institutions committed to ten key principles to make their institutions more responsive to older adults. 

These principles include encouraging older adults to participate in a university’s core activities, including research; creating opportunities for older adults to study at universities, including in graduate and post-graduate programs and online education; promoting intergenerational learning and teaching current students about the needs of aging societies.

“There’s just a really strong imperative right now to address the needs of older adults, and the university is perfectly positioned to make a difference there,” said Canning.

Including older adults helps younger students, says Canning, who teaches in the university’s nursing department. Students who are 20-somethings will spend the formative years of their careers “work[ing] within a population that is aging.”

The Age-Friendly University Global Network has nine Canadian members. Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Metro Vancouver is the latest Canadian addition; the University of Manitoba was the first Canadian institution to join, in 2016.

Incorporating these principles looks different at each school. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., has focused on involving more older adults in research projects about aging. The university is also making it easier for older adults to get around its sprawling campus.

Other schools are creating  opportunities for students and older adults to spend time together.

Ontario Tech University in Oshawa has hosted intergenerational games nights. These opportunities benefit everyone involved, says Shilpa Dogra, a kinesiology professor at the school and founding chair of a university-wide committee dedicated to helping the school become age-friendly.

Dogra, who researches healthy aging, has had her students interview seniors in the community about how they are staying active. The students then teach seniors something they want to learn. Some seniors wanted to learn salsa or hip-hop dancing; others wanted to learn about ChatGPT. She did not have enough spots for all the seniors who wanted to participate, she says.

Students often tell her that spending time with seniors decreases their anxiety and improves their mental health, she says. Seniors say they enjoy spending time with young people.

This helps everyone understand each other better.

“There’s stereotypes from younger people about older adults, but older adults have a lot of stereotypes about the younger generations as well,” said Dogra.

Jennifer Jakobi sees similar things happening at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. The campus, which was certified as age-friendly in 2022, has formed partnerships with local retirement homes. Students come in and offer free exercise classes to residents. The school also gives residents free tickets to certain varsity sports games where students watch the games with them.

“You can see both groups of individuals just lighting up and learning from each other and having fun together,” Jakobi said.

The impacts of being certified as an age-friendly university are not always readily seen on campuses, she says. But the network provides institutions with research and connections with other schools that want to increase their age friendliness.

“The age-friendly university movement is about culture change,” said Michelle Porter, director of the Centre on Aging at the University of Manitoba. “Culture change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Like many universities, the University of Manitoba offers free tuition for students older than 65. But not many students 65-and-older attend the school, says Porter. Many do not know about the free tuition or find the application process complicated. Representatives from several universities that offer free tuition for older adults told Canadian Affairs the same thing.

When Virginia Page Jähne, 75, began studying at the University of Manitoba, she says she would accost every older adult she met — then discover they were professors, not fellow students.

Page Jähne, who is currently completing a PhD in English, says she cannot see much evidence of age-friendly initiatives on campus. So she created the Cicero Club for graduate and post-graduate students who are over 50.

The club provides a space for older students to get to know each other, as students her age “aren’t meeting at the bar on Friday for happy hour,” she said.

While it was difficult to fit in at times, Page Jähne says her professors have also welcomed her. 

Fellow older student Cornelia Kauenhowen plans to begin her own doctorate studies after she completes her master’s. After that, she wants to see about teaching at a university.

Before she began university, she had felt alone in her concerns about the environment, Indigenous rights and gender equality. Now, at university, she has found people who share her same passions. “I like to think I found my tribe,” she said.

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