With student enrollment numbers in Taiwan falling, private universities are closing for good. Taiwan’s birthrate is declining and the proportion of aging Taiwanese continues to rise.
Just last year, the population of Taiwanese aged 65 or older was 18.4 percent. South Korea’s situation looks worse, with people 65 and over accounting for 19.51 percent of its population. Next year, South Korea and Taiwan are to become hyper-aged societies. In other words, one in every five people would be aged 65 or older.
Both countries need to face the serious issue of school closures, from universities to kindergartens, as well as the increased likelihood of a precipitous drop in housing prices.
Should universities close their doors due to low enrollment? In the US, closures are not a foregone conclusion. The age of students and researchers in US universities has long surpassed the traditional student range, with universities and research institutes having lifted restrictions on the age of applicants.
This is not to say that older applicants receive any special treatment due to their age. Older applicants face the same set of application criteria. The lifting of age restrictions has hugely boosted the US social progress, as many courses people studied in the past are outdated.
For non-traditional students — such as those in their 40s, 60s, 80s or even older — returning to school not only aids their personal advancement, it brings massive benefits in terms of improving memory and cognition skills. Education promotes good brain health and reduces the chances of mental deterioration or reduced cognitive function. This also raises the standards of the population.
Given that Taiwan has a population that is growing older, should it not adopt a solution that benefits from older people’s inclusion, by throwing open the doors of universities to non-traditional students? The real estate used for elementary and junior-high schools with dwindling student numbers or derelict campuses could be repurposed as branch or satellite university campuses, creating a closer-to-home option for some older Taiwanese. There are no downsides for universities using this option to survive.
When baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — were younger, the Taiwanese economy was picking up steam. At the time, only about 30 percent of Taiwanese adults could or did attend universities. Seventy percent had ties to tertiary education. This is no longer true. Having grown up during an economic boom, their generation is in a good financial situation, and in later life they have the ability and willingness to spend money on university tuition — even on graduate school.
Japan has the world’s oldest population. It became a super-aged society in 2004 and the senior demographic is on track to reach 36.6 percent of its population in 2050. This puts a burden on the country’s middle-aged and younger populations, and is a dynamic that Taiwan must also contend with.
Taiwan ought to learn from Japan, and boldly open its universities to every age group to respond to the country’s demographic changes.
President William Lai’s (賴清德) intention to institute a 3.0 adjustment to long-term care is a good thing, but more importantly, it enables older Taiwanese to not be relegated to living the last decade of their lives just laying around in bed. They could go as far as even Queen Elizabeth II did and continue to be active and engaged right up until the end of their lives.
This should be the end goal — for people to feel fulfillment even in their later years and to inject some senior citizen dividends into society.
Suei DiPaola is an author and graduate student in the Institute of Gerontology at Georgia State University in the US.
Translated by Tim Smith
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