As Rhode Island experiences a critical shortage of caregivers for seniors and adults with disabilities, some health professionals are calling for innovative solutions that higher education may play a key role in.
The senior population is growing nationwide, causing an increase in demand for senior care. Adults aged 65 and above increased from 12% to 18% between 2014 and 2024, according to the United States Census Bureau. In Rhode Island, the senior population is particularly high, with 1 in 4 residents over the age of 60.
Rhode Island is ranked No. 22 in the nation in caregiver burden, the amount of unpaid care provided for elders and relatives, in the U.S., according to a 2025 report from Seniorly Resource Center. While more so than some, Rhode Island is not unique in the deficit of professional care. The report shows a record 14% of Americans serving as unpaid caregivers for an elder in their lives.
Rhode Island generally has high standards for professional caregiving. Still, there are disparities in access between rural and urban areas, according to Steven Cohen, a University of Rhode Island professor of public health who researches caregiving.
“Providence County and South County have a lot of rural areas where there’s actually a higher concentration of older adults, [but] have lower concentration of services,” Cohen, co-author of the Rhode Island Caregiving Study, said.
A commonly cited factor behind the shrinking workforce is the pay rate, according to an annual report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median hourly wage for home care aides in 2025 was $17.28, just under $2 above the Rhode Island minimum wage.
“One of the confounding factors is that the cost of living is much higher here,” Cohen said. “So, when you adjust for cost of living, Rhode Island does not do well in terms of those pay rates.”
Anna Matos-Mourighan, director of Salve Regina’s healthcare administration graduate program, spoke with Ocean State Media about the growing caregiver gap and the role community institutions like higher education can play in finding the next workforce wave on Feb. 2.
Approximately 20% of the nursing home workforce has been lost in Rhode Island since 2020, according to Matos-Mourighan. Most remaining nursing homes are understaffed.
The workforce deficit puts a financial and time strain on families who care for their own loved ones, according to Matos-Mourighan.
“Their efforts amount to about 113 million hours of unpaid care, which is the equivalent of $2.1 billion in labor,” Matos-Mourighan said in the Ocean State Media interview. “Approximately 80% of them are paying out of pocket to meet some of their care needs or for their loved ones, which is about 25% of their income.”
Apart from the lack of financial incentive, it can be challenging to generate general interest in geriatric care among those entering or pivoting within the workforce, according to Cohen.
“A much bigger challenge in my mind, is making caring for older adults a sexy topic that students care about,” Cohen said. “I think this is something that speaks to the broader perceptions of aging.”
URI could create more opportunities for student involvement by incorporating more engagement with senior populations into its community outreach programs, according to Cohen.
“That’s part of our land-grant institution mission is to do [community outreach],” Cohen said. “We do so much, I would say, good community outreach. I think there could be more of a focus on older adults.”
Some universities have created mixed-age housing programs as well as learning opportunities for seniors on and off their campuses, according to Matos-Mourighan. Laselle University’s Laselle Village, a continuing-care retirement community on a shared campus in Newton, Mass., is an example.
“What is innovative, very innovative, is this idea that colleges and universities are now starting to see the value in having older adults either live on campus or adjacent to campus,” Matos-Mourighan said.
A similar idea was floated by faculty at the URI Human Development and Family Science department a few years prior, but the discussion lost momentum, according to Cohen.
“I think there’s just not a lot of knowledge and, I think, political public will to do that here,” Cohen said.
