Lifelong Learning Demographics

martyp said:
I should add that one of the motivations for providing lifelong learning opportunities is the growing amount of evidence that continuous learning is beneficial to mental health as we grow older. So is physical exercise, diet, and good medical care. We are just doing our part.
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That's great; you keep at it. In Get a Life, the author asked retirees "What's the most important thing a person can do to create a happy retirement?" Over and over, the answers came back:

- Learn new things
- Develop lots of interests
- Find useful ways to connect to the world
- Cultivate important relationships
- Take steps to protect your health

I think OLLI can help with each of those, especially the first. I am still trying to decide where I will live, when I retire. One of my main criteria, though, is that it should have plenty of opportunities for lifelong learning. Every one of my top contenders have OLLIs in them.

I find it interesting that you turn some people down who want to teach classes. I suppose that is necessary. I guess I had the picture that people just volunteered to teach a class, and that was that. Do you tend to turn people down because you think the class won't attract the minimum number of students to break even?
 
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ER Eddie said:
I find it interesting that you turn some people down who want to teach classes. I suppose that is necessary. I guess I had the picture that people just volunteered to teach a class, and that was that. Do you tend to turn people down because you think the class won't attract the minimum number of students to break even?
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Many of the teachers are retired professors. I've been doing something a little different. I've been putting together what amounts to a speaker series. I get working professors, post-docs, and grad students to speak for 1 - 2 hrs. Usually they explore a topic by talking about current research. My job is to put together a coherent series of speakers. Some teachers are experts in their field. I just took a documentary film class taught by a local journalist/film critic who also brought in the directors of the films to answer questions about them. Some of the dance classes are taught by a local choreographer and former ballerina. That sort of thing.

Not everyone who has taught or aspires to teach makes for a compelling teacher. We screen them like any hiring process. Better to turn them down than to subject 50-100 members to 6 weeks of disorganization and boredom. The guy who wanted to teach the science of cooking was a PhD chemical engineer. He was knowledgeable about chemistry and had a passion for food and cooking but he was young and couldn't convince us that he could put together an organize talk for six 2-hr classes. We had a journalist, who covers sailing, put on a summer 4 class series on the America's Cup race (which will be held locally this year). He knew the racers, history of the race, the physics of sailing, and the business/politics of the race. Sounded like a substantive class.

We have had some classes with as few as 12 people sign up. We usually have 3-4 classes that have over 100+ people sign up. My first class had 30 people and the second class had 60 people. The workshops are 15-20 people. The big classes subsidize the small class. You just need to manage it responsibly.

We also have to consider that members pay a membership fee and then pay for the classes. They deserve to get some quality for their money. The teachers get a nominal fee for teaching (about $100/class).
 
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Interesting, thanks Marty. It is a challenge to put together that much material and keep it interesting, so I can see how you'd have to turn some aspiring teachers down. Nice of them to volunteer, though. That's essentially volunteer work, so it must kind of suck to get turned down. I understand you have to keep up the quality, though.

There are OLLIs in other parts of the country that don't have the populace that you do (Bay Area, right?), so they would have fewer people volunteering to teach, and I imagine they would be less selective in who they let behind the podium.
 
ER Eddie said:
There are OLLIs in other parts of the country that don't have the populace that you do (Bay Area, right?), so they would have fewer people volunteering to teach, and I imagine they would be less selective in who they let behind the podium.
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I don't know much about the OLLI's but I suspect you are right.

UCLA has an interesting program that qualifies as lifelong learning. It's called the PLATO society

UCLA Honors Programs Academics
 
Thanks to PBS, Science channel, and History channel, I get to explore lots of topics from the comfort of my sofa... :p
 
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Cool, thanks for the additions. Didn't know about those.
 
I think having the time to take the classes is a factor. Some people are w*rking or too tired from it to take classes, IMO.
 
Beryl said:
I think having the time to take the classes is a factor. Some people are w*rking or too tired from it to take classes, IMO.
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25% of the men are working. I'm not sure how many are really semi-retired. But for the most part the OLLI membership is retired people.

This afternoon, I was asked to serve on their Research Committee so I may be able to look into this in more detail.
 
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