Over 25 years, 8000 senior citizens have graduated from Comenius University’s University of the Third Age
Over 25 years, 8000 senior citizens have graduated from the University of the Third Age at Comenius University’s Centre for Continuing Education (CCE CU UTA). The oldest graduate is 96-year-old Niké Klimešová-Wagnerová, MD, who has already completed three programmes of study.
This year 413 senior citizens, of whom 358 are women, completed their studies. Some of the most popular disciplines included the history and monuments of Bratislava, art history, psychology, the physical and psychological regeneration of senior citizens, medicines and health, gardening, 7x7 wonders of Slovakia, the history and culture of Austria, and UNESCO.
“Students can choose from a range of 35 fields of study. Study is undertaken in the form of interest-based education of the non-qualification variety. In the first year, students attend common core subjects. These are introductory lectures in the separate disciplines offered at the University of the Third Age. In the second and third years of study, students then focus on their selected fields,” says PhDr. Nadežda Hrapková, Ph.D., the head methodologist at the CCE CU UTA.
Tuition takes place every fourteen days, when students are offered a thematically focused two-hour lecture according to the timetable of specific disciplines. After completing three years of study, graduates are then ceremoniously awarded with a certificate in interest-based education at the UTA.
Many graduates return to study at the UTA again and again. One such example is 96-year-old Niké Klimešová-Wagnerová, MD, who has just completed her studies in art history. “The University of the Third Age at Comenius University offers senior citizens the secret of eternal youth of the soul: not to live in the past, but rather to set oneself new tasks, gain new knowledge and thus be a part of modern life,” says Niké in praise of the UTA, which she has been attending since she was 87 years old.
This year’s graduation ceremonies for CCE CU UTA students will take place on Wednesday 8 June 2016 at 10 am and at 1 pm in the Comenius University Auditorium in Bratislava (on the first floor of the university building at 6 Šafárik Square).