Student Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Older People and Their Impact on Pursuing Aging Careers

Abstract

The international community is facing the pressure of aging societies. In the United States of America, we will shortly be facing the aging of baby boomers, a dramatically large population expected to peak as senior citizens in 2030 at 70 million. Global societies are facing a crisis: lack of adequately trained and emotionally oriented personnel to work with aging persons in all fields, especially health and human services. There has been rising concern on how human service and social work programs resume their role in training future professionals in the aging fields. The focus of this article is an in-depth review of previous studies on understanding students' knowledge, negative attitudes toward older people, and how such attitudes and key factors are dissuasive to pursuing careers in the aging field. In addition, I provide a comprehensive review on factors that will increase the awareness of aging dynamics. Based on both persuasive and dissuasive factors, I conclude with aging curriculum improvements within academic human service programs and encourage interdepartmental collaborations for the benefit of all professions. Facing the fact that the aging population has been rising exponentially with the recent pressure of the aging of baby boomer generation in America, our society is facing a crisis: lack of adequately trained, and emotionally oriented, personnel to work with aging persons in various fields. In preparation, it is necessary to engage more awareness of aging and encourage people to enter aging specialties within the field of human services and social work. Particularly, training of professionals specializing in gerontology and geriatrics is urgent. Within the last three decades, there has been rising concern among human service and social work programs to resume their roles and develop new strategies on training future helping professionals in the aging fields.