Baby Boomers now live next to 18-year-olds at colleges across the U.S.

Los Angeles Times

25-07-2025

On a Monday afternoon last spring at Lasell University, students wrapped up their final beginner Spanish class of the semester. Pairing up, they drilled each other on their names, favorite foods and hobbies.
It was a routine conversation for Sara Leclair and Mandy Waddell, until Leclair, a 20-year-old sophomore, asked her partner, 'Cuantos años tienes?' How old are you?
'Oh, this is getting personal,' Waddell exclaimed in mock chagrin. 'Ochenta y uno.' Eighty-one. The two laughed, and the lesson went on.
The intergenerational classmates — Leclair, an early-childhood education major, and Waddell, a retired elementary school teacher — were brought together through the partnership between Lasell University and Lasell Village, a senior living community on the school's 54-acre campus outside of Boston. The unconventional arrangement, which offers retirees the chance to share space and studies with co-eds while providing a source of revenue for the university to help buttress its finances, has proved to be an enduring success, and increasingly, a blueprint.
There's arguably no better manifestation of the graying of America than senior citizens populating campuses originally designed for 18-year-olds. But as US student enrollment dwindles, school expenses soar and the country's population rapidly ages, the improbable mashup is making more and more sense. Andrew Carle, a senior living consultant, estimates there are already about 85 of what he dubs university retirement communities in the country, a number he says is only set to grow in the years ahead.
'You couldn't find a bigger odd couple,' Carle said. 'But when you do it right, the synergy is there and it can be an extremely successful model for both parties.'
This is a niche – and often expensive – part of the senior living market, to be sure. It's not a cure-all for the harsh realities facing higher education, a list that includes declining enrollment, rising costs and this year's funding threats under the Trump administration. And not all schools are well-suited for inviting a retirement community onto campus. But the partnership does work in many cases, and it represents the kind of creative thinking that will be increasingly required in the face of convulsive demographic change.
Starting in the coming school year, researchers say there will be dramatically fewer high school graduates available to fill the country's higher-ed classrooms, stemming from a decline in birth rates that started around the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people are turning 65 each day in the US. By 2050, the number of older adults is expected to reach 88 million people and make up more than 20% of the country's population, exceeding those under 18.
Higher education's shrinking student base has already forced at least 40 US colleges to announce plans to shut down since 2020, and experts predict as many as 80 more schools may find themselves in the same situation in coming years, under a worst-case drop in enrollment.
On the other side of the divide, the rising tide of seniors is placing more urgency on the need for housing to accommodate the oncoming 'silver tsunami,' with current trendlines pointing to a supply-demand imbalance of worrisome proportions. The nonprofit National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care estimates that some 806,000 of new retirement units will be required in the US by 2030. But in this year's first quarter, less than 20,000 units were under construction in the 31 markets NIC analyzes — the lowest level since 2013.
Against this backdrop, a growing cadre of school administrators and senior-living operators are joining forces to find solutions that address the needs of both constituents. In doing so, they are tapping into a movement that can trace its roots back to the 1980s and two pioneering midwestern institutions: Iowa State University and Indiana University. Both colleges were faced with the situation of retired administrators, professors and alumni who wanted to live out their golden years on their beloved campuses. In response, the schools started nearby developments to accommodate them, eventually partnering with senior living operators and helping to form a new framework.
Since then, different iterations have blossomed across the US, from communities such as Lasell Village, which are on campus and require residents to agree to log 450 hours of learning each year, to those with looser affiliations. Some, like University of Alabama's Capstone Village community, are also on campus and have official partnerships with the university, but don't require residents to partake in programming. Others are simply located near a campus and share a less-formal connection with a university, like Legacy Pointe just off the main University of Central Florida campus.
Schools often receive revenue through a land lease, royalty agreement or management contract. In rarer instances, they set up full or partial ownership of the retirement communities, sometimes through separate nonprofit organizations.
Lasell Village was the brainchild of former President Tom de Witt, who landed on senior living as a way to leverage Lasell University's valuable land and bring another source of income onto its struggling balance sheet. With insolvency closing in, de Witt proposed transforming an unused parcel of land near the edge of campus as a place for retirees. It opened in 2000.
'I had to take Lasell Junior College literally out of bankruptcy,' he said in an interview, 'or there would be nothing here now.'
Some abandoned campuses have been transformed into senior-living communities. That was the case for Newbury College in Boston, which shuttered in 2019, bowing to 'weighty financial challenges' driven by low enrollment and higher expenses. In the 20 years leading up to Newbury's closure, its headcount dropped from more than 5,300 students to about 600.
Kisco Senior Living opened The Newbury of Brookline, an upscale senior living center on the closed college's campus, in December 2024. The development company HYM Investment Group bulldozed Newbury's classrooms and dorms to build the new retirement community, but were able to keep Mitton House, an 1896 mansion that was one of the school's architectural crown jewels.
Doug Manz, HYM's chief investment officer, said closed college campuses can be attractive sites in crowded real estate markets like Boston or New York. Eastern Nazarene College's campus in Quincy, Massachusetts, which recently closed, has been floated for conversion. And the College of New Rochelle, less than 20 miles from midtown Manhattan, is potentially slated for senior housing.
'It's unfortunate, but small liberal arts colleges are disappearing,' Manz said. 'Meanwhile, there's high demand for senior housing. Both trends happening at the same time can create very unique opportunities.'
Broadview, a senior living community on Purchase College's campus in Westchester County, a wealthy pocket within the greater New York area, saw rabid interest when it opened in December 2023, using about $400 million in municipal bonds to complete the development. Some 18 months later, the independent living space is full, with about 75 households on the waiting list, according to executive director Ashley Wade.
'There's been a lot of interest,' she said. 'It speaks to how many people want retirement on their terms. Our residents have been lifelong learners and they want that in their retirement, too.'
Steve Shelov, a former pediatrician who retired a year-and-a-half ago, is emblematic of the kind of residents attracted to Broadview. The 80-year-old's packed schedule has included mentoring pre-med students, attending shows at Purchase College's performing arts center, meeting with school administrators and taking classes on art history and the Bible. 'If you look at my week, it's so full,' he said.
As with most retirement communities, Broadview requires an up-front entrance fee, which in its case ranges from about $270,00 to as much as $2.5 million. At the end of the contract – when a resident dies or moves out – the facility pays 80% of the entrance fees to them or their beneficiary. They also pay monthly fees ranging from almost $4,000 to nearly $13,000.
In return for their place on Purchase College's campus, Broadview pays $2 million to the school each year. Mike Kopas, Purchase's vice president for administration, said 75% of that goes toward student scholarships and 25% is dedicated to supporting faculty. Kopas said the income is a relatively small part of Purchase's balance sheet, but allows the school more flexibility and ability to offer aid to students.
'The scholarship dollars have so far been above and beyond what we'd been able to offer before,' Kopas said.
As higher education becomes an increasingly challenging business, experts like Carle say they're getting more calls from cash-strapped colleges looking at retirement communities. Unfortunately, the characteristics that make a college unlikely to thrive in today's environment — small, private schools in remote areas — also make it a poor fit for senior living.
'I have to tell them, 'Look, you're a small liberal arts college in South Dakota with 900 students, 500 miles from anything,'' Carle said. 'There's just not a senior living market there.'
There are other reasons that this collaboration can be tough to pull off: Senior housing companies — often under pressure to deliver shareholder returns — may find it challenging to wait out the bureaucratic processes of higher education. For example, Purchase College's leadership proposed bringing on a senior living facility in 2003. Doors opened two decades later in December 2023.
Unsupportive neighbors and local government can also delay projects, like in the case of Lasell Village, when a zoning fight ended up in court, holding up progress for years. Schools also run the risk of partnering with unreliable companies. Carle points to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to prop up its senior living center through bankruptcy and construction delays.
Other times, tensions flare once facilities have opened and retirees have moved in. At Mirabella, a senior living community on Arizona State University's campus, residents and the complex sued a nearby entertainment venue for 'incessant' and 'unrelenting' noise. For some students, the complaints brought other grievances with the retirement community to the surface.
'ASU's decision to build Mirabella while ignoring the needs of its student population shows its prioritization of money over academic success,' Haley Tenore wrote in a 2021 opinion column for the student newspaper. 'As students on campus struggle financially and are made to live in subpar housing conditions, the University continues to expand outward, sometimes in areas where it is not wanted.'
Eventually, Mirabella and the venue reached a resolution and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit. Meanwhile, other students have praised the on-campus retirement community for fostering unexpected friendships and creating new programs.
These arrangements have the best chance of success, experts say, when they emphasize a collaborative approach centered on intergenerational experiences and lifelong learning — not just seeing the partnership as a way to fill a budget gap.
At Lasell Village, students fill notoriously difficult-to-staff dining hall roles and say they feel like they've got 200 grandparents. The organizations have partnered to host a 'senior prom' — senior in both senses of the word — for students and residents alike.
Friendships have bloomed from those interactions. Courtney Tello, an elementary education major who graduated from Lasell University in May, considers Lasell Village resident Toni Miller her 'bonus grandmother.'
'Meeting Toni has been a major part of my college experience,' said Tello. 'She keeps me motivated and checks up on me, I know of so many students who could benefit from a friendship like this.'
As for former Lasell University President de Witt, now retired himself, he moved in as a resident in August 2021, about a half mile from where he lived as the school's president.
'Of course I moved in, why would I not do that?' he said. 'I was president here for 19 years, this is my neighborhood.'
Rembert writes for Bloomberg.