Amber Henninger is a Stanford University senior in Palo Alto, California, but not in the way it sounds.
Henninger is 85 and a resident of Vi at Palo Alto, a continuing-care retirement community on land leased from Stanford. It's one of a fast-growing number of such developments on or near university and college campuses. While these communities typically are expensive to join, their residents enjoy varying degrees of involvement with the partner schools, offering a connection the older adults feel is worth the price.
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Decked out in a Stanford T-shirt, sneakers and Stanford-red earrings — and carrying a tote bag with the logo of the university's Hoover Institution public policy think tank, Henninger leads a visitor past Vi's high-ceilinged lobby with its grand piano in front of floor-to-ceiling windows, settles into a sun-filled coffee lounge and describes why she and her late husband — both alumni — decided to settle here.
"People need to have purpose in their lives,” says Henninger, who goes to every home basketball and football game, works as an usher at graduation and other events, hosts visiting Hoover fellows, and enjoys the many types of music on offer and the six lectures per month in the building's auditorium.
"Retirement was going to be the next phase of life. It wasn't going to be the end of life,” she says. “And to connect with a university gives you so many options."
Many retirees agree. There are now at least 80 university-affiliated continuing-care retirement — also known as life-plan — communities, according to Ziegler and Company, an investment bank that specializes in senior housing and education.
In addition to Vi at Palo Alto, these communities include Kendal at Oberlin, University Place at Purdue, Lasell Village at Lasell College, Capstone Village at the University of Alabama, Woodlands at Furman University, Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, Holy Cross Village near Notre Dame, and St. Mary's Court at George Washington University.
More and even larger such developments are planned or under construction, including Mirabella at Arizona State University, The Spires at Berry College, Legacy Point at the University of Central Florida, and Broadview Senior Living at Purchase College. Prospective occupants don't have to be alumni of these institutions to live in such places, and the proportions who are range widely. For example, at Vi, about a quarter of the residents went to, or worked at, Stanford.
"The benefits flow both ways, for the folks that are residents of these facilities and for universities that are wise enough to connect with them,” says Todd Hardy, Arizona State's managing director of innovation zones.
You don't need a degree to understand the math. Colleges and universities are facing lopsided demographics, as a decline in the number of 18-year-olds cuts deeply into enrollment while the number of retirees is growing fast.
There are 3 million fewer students now than there were at the last peak, in 2011, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks this. The fastest growth over the next 10 years, meanwhile, will be among people 65 and older.
"Universities need to diversify, and if they're largely tuition-driven, you need to find other revenue sources,” says Tom Meuser, director of the Center for Excellence in Aging and Health at the University of New England (UNE).
And while they may be short on students, many colleges have something else in abundance: real estate.
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