Universities for elderly prove too popular
Print Edition
SANG Meiying, 74, teaches music every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Shizuishan “university” of the elderly in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, regardless of the weather.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, she takes classes in calligraphy and painting.
“I don’t get tired at all. We are teacher and students, and we are friends,” Sang said. “The college has filled our lives with color.”
China’s elderly population is rising rapidly. Thanks to a healthy economy, old people are expecting a better quality of life, and thus these colleges for the elderly were born.
In 1983, China’s first university for the elderly opened in east China’s Shandong Province.
Today, there are about 60,000 such schools. More than 7 million people are students of such universities, according to the China association university of the elderly.
“I didn’t find any of that very interesting,” Sang said. He believed that the more free time you had, the more exhausted you became. “The college has made our lives meaningful again,” she said.
Growing demand has far outstripped the rise in supply. Getting into such schools is competitive. “We receive far too many applications every year, and the places are very limited,” said Wan Nianchun, deputy principal of the University of the Elderly in Hubei Province.
Shandong’s college started online applications three years ago, said its deputy principal, “People can book a subject university of the elderly with just a few clicks online,” he said.
The most popular course has been dance — all the available places for the fall semester were filled just seven minutes after applications opened.
The situation is the same in some cities. In Hangzhou, the enrolment rate for the most popular subject is 16:1. In Jiangsu, people queued overnight for a single place.
While the colleges are very popular there is no shortage of complaints.
“Some people do not want to graduate.”
“It’s difficult to secure a place, so I have to study from home.”
“They are too popular...”
This year, the number of people aged 60 or older in Jinan reached 1.3 million. But the city can only provide college places for 20,000 of them.
“The popularity is not just about improved education for our senior citizens, but also shows a lack of other elder care services,” said Gao Liping, deputy director of Shandong Academy of Social Science’s population research institute.
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