The author of your text states that the most age-segregated social institution in our society is a four-year college.
Even as changing demographics make this educational paradigm outmoded, universities are among the most age-segregated social institution, catering mostly to young people in their late teens and early 20s. Social Institutions are structured patterns of ideas and behavior that are oriented on fundamental social needs.
Social Institutions are interconnected systems of social roles and social norms that are established to fulfill a vital social need or social function. That was all altered by the Industrial Revolution. The young and the old could not work in factories because they were too risky; only people in their middle years did so. Pediatrics and gerontology are emerging fields in healthcare. People started to gradually separate by age.
The answer is social theories. It is because social theories
focuses more on the empirical evidence that lies in a framework in means of
using as a study in a way of interpreting the social phenomena that is
happening in the society.
