Lifelong Learning Institutes and Universities of the Third Age
It is in this same period that college-and university-based Institutes for Learning in Retirement (ILRs, later renamed Lifelong Learning Institutes, or LLIs) arose. The prototype for subsequent LLIs was the Institute for Retired Professionals established in 1962 at the New School for Social Research (now New School University) in New York City. Only a handful of the member-led, member-taught, educational programs had appeared by the mid-1970s but by the mid-1980s there was a sharp rise in the rate of new programs started each year, until, by 2000, there were more than 400 of these programs across the United States and Canada.
Lifelong Learning Institutes were unique not only because the members were in charge but also because they were based on a financial model that required participants to help pay for the cost of their own continuing education. Today, this financing method may seem unexceptional, but at the time the idea that older learners should pay for their own education was unprecedented. Previously, older learner programs generally depended on the largesse of private and public foundations and government subsidies. That funding basis explains why these programs were so often episodic, coming and going in repetitive cycles of demonstration projects that left no infrastructure behind. Perhaps the self-financing business model of most continuing adult education departments influenced Lifelong Learning Institutes where, institutionally, they were most often located. This radically new idea of self-financing programs was a harbinger of the future.
Today, the network of Lifelong Learning Institutes is loosely linked through affiliation with the Elderhostel Institute Network (EIN), a consortium supported, in part, through the largesse of Elderhostel and that has an extensive website that lists member programs, posts monthly newsletters, and provides extensive material on curricula, bylaws, how to start an LLI, and so on.
A new catalyst helping to promote establishment of new Lifelong Learning Institutes and expansion of existing ones is the Bernard Osher Foundation, which, since the early 1990s, has generously funded 79 Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLIs) and aims to bring that total to 100 over the next few years.
The counterpart to Lifelong Learning Institutes in the United States and Canada are the Universities of the Third Age, which, as mentioned earlier, began in 1973 in France and subsequently spread throughout Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Eastern Europe. The growth of U3As is reflected in the 574 groups, with a total membership of 153 443 as of February 2006, in the UK alone. Some U3As use a study circle approach with all participants helping to educate one another, while others use expert-led formats. Many national U3As participate in the Inter- national Association of U3As, or AIUTA (the French acronym).