Encore Generation

At a couple of recent meetings I found myself making reference to a recent book on the encore generation, healthy baby boomers retiring and then returning to the workforce to look for new ways of making contributions to society. The book in question is Marc Freedman, Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (New York: Public Affairs, 2007). Freedman describes how many baby boomers are facing 30 years of retirement and how many were disatisfied with their former careers and now see a way to do new and more positive things, especially as predictions of labor shortages of 9 million in 2010 and 18.1 million in 2020 loom ahead of us. Since many of these baby boomers are fairly sophisticated in their knowledge and use of information technology, this may be a new market for new and different students for a school like ours. In my opinion, this is a book worth a read and worth some thinking of new programs, especially for our underutilized CAS degree.