Despite an Aging Population in U.S., Fewer Programs Are Training Gerontologists

The growth of America’s elderly population is about to accelerate. In 2011, the oldest members of the postwar baby boom will turn 65—and there are plenty of boomers right behind them. Today 40.2 million Americans are age 65 and older, but in 2020 the figure will be 54.8 million, the U.S. Census Bureau recently estimated.

Higher education, however, may not be rising to the occasion, according to an analysis presented here on Saturday during the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America. From 2000 to 2009, the study found, the number of American academic programs dedicated to the study of aging and the needs of elderly people actually declined by 11 percent.

“This is exactly the time when the number of programs should be increasing, not decreasing,” said one of the report’s authors, Donna E. Schafer, executive director of the National Association for Professional Gerontologists.

Ms. Schafer and two colleagues tallied three types of academic program. They counted degree programs in gerontology. They counted aging-related minors and concentrations within other departments. (Such concentrations are most commonly offered in nursing, psychology, public policy, social work, and sociology programs.) And they counted certificate programs—that is, programs certifying, for example, that a social-work student has completed two weeks of training in geriatric care.

In all three categories, at almost every level of higher education, the number of programs has fallen, the researchers found. The sole areas of growth were an increase in the number of doctoral programs in gerontology (to nine from six) and a small bump in the number of aging-related fellowships, residencies, and clinical programs.

Lacking a Clear Identity

The numbers most alarming to Ms. Schafer and her colleagues are the declines in gerontology degrees as such. “We have got to do something about this as a discipline,” said Anabel O. Pelham, a professor of gerontology at San Francisco State University who collaborated with Ms. Schafer on the study. (The third author was Pauline Abbott, a professor of gerontology at California State University at Fullerton.)

Part of the problem is that gerontology programs lack a clear identity in the mind of the public, said Daniel J. Van Dussen, coordinator of Youngstown State University’s gerontology program, during a second panel session here.

He recently conducted a study of 89 geriatric professionals—including, for example, directors of county agencies on aging—within a 50-mile radius of Youngstown, Ohio. Only three of those professionals had earned bachelor’s degrees in gerontology, and only five had completed aging-related minors or concentrations. Most had found their way into their professions from other fields. (For his part, Mr. Van Dussen has a doctorate in gerontology from the University of Maryland.)

“When you say that you’re a gerontologist, you sometimes get blank stares,” Mr. Van Dussen said. “But there’s a real need for specialized expertise on aging. We need to work with employers to show them the unique skills of our graduates.”

One answer to that problem, he said, is to create an accreditation system for degree programs in gerontology.

The Association for Gerontology in Higher Education has been laying the groundwork for such an accreditation system. Officials of the group are scheduled to present a “road map” for accreditation on Monday afternoon here at the gerontology-society conference.

Accreditation would help professionalize the field, Mr. Van Dussen said, by clarifying the specific types of health-care skills, sociological knowledge, and administrative expertise that gerontology students should acquire.

In an interview, Ms. Pelham said accreditation would also help gerontology programs to persuade provosts that the programs need and deserve support. “In fights for tenure-track lines and other resources,” she said, “gerontology programs sometimes have to go to the back of the line.”

Not everyone at the conference seemed ready to embrace that idea. During Ms. Schafer’s panel, an audience member asked whether accreditation would simply represent one more financial burden on already-strained gerontology programs. Others said accreditation and certification for gerontologists and their academic programs may lead to turf battles with other professions that serve elderly people.

Angling for Students

Meanwhile, what explains the decline in aging-related minors and concentrations in departments like psychology and social work? During both of Saturday’s panels, scholars said it was difficult to lure undergraduates into such programs. Twenty-year-old aspiring psychotherapists and social workers are much more likely to want to work with children than with the elderly, they said.

But three social-work professors reported that they have created geriatric concentrations with the support of a national program that was originally financed by the John A. Hartford Foundation. At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, social-work students go on “geriatric grand rounds” with medical and nursing students.

In a parallel effort, the Council on Social Work Education has started to publish model syllabi for master’s-level courses on aging.

“There is nobody in this room who isn’t concerned about these issues,” said Suzanne Kunkel, director of the Scripps Gerontology Center, at Miami University in Ohio, during Mr. Van Dussen’s panel. “We need to move toward the point where gerontology isn’t just a degree that’s nice to have, but something that really ought to be required for certain kinds of jobs.”