Forget Tuition: How Retirees Can Attend College for Free

[See 6 Ways to Make Your Retirement Accounts Last Longer.]

Hidden Costs. Even if you qualify for free tuition and watch out for fees, you'll still have to pay for things like books and parking (which is notoriously difficult to find and is a considerable expense on many college campuses.) Many traditional courses also have online components, so you may need a computer and Internet access. Says Margaret Rubega, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, “I’m having the students use Twitter to make posts about what they are seeing in the bird life outside the course." She currently has one older student auditing her ornithology (bird science) class. “When I asked the students how many of them know what Twitter is, the one person in the course who raised their hand was the older person auditing the class.”

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