Universities Take Varying Approaches to Retiring Faculty Members, Study Finds
Chronicle of Higher Education 3/13/07
The report, "Survey of Changes in Faculty Retirement Policies 2007," is based on responses from more than 500 public and private colleges and universities, and updates the findings of an earlier study that was conducted for the association in 2000.
While 96 percent of the institutions responding to the new survey said recruiting faculty members was "very important" and 89 percent called retaining current faculty members a priority, only 19 percent of the institutions reported that retiring older professors was of high concern.
As faculty members live longer and age in their jobs, institutions are only beginning to recognize the "complexity" of the retirement process, said Valerie Martin Conley, the report's author and the director of the Center for Higher Education at Ohio University. "One size clearly does not fit all anymore, if it ever did, in terms of retiring from an academic career," she said in an interview. Older faculty members have a variety of needs and want more choices, she added.
Health insurance is the "sleeping giant in the room," Ms. Conley said. While 82 percent of responding institutions reported that faculty retirees continued to be eligible for group health insurance, the percentage of the costs those institutions bore varied widely.
And health benefits may not be guaranteed to continue throughout retirement years, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, author of the 2000 study and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, pointed out.
Employers are prevented by law from slashing retirement-income benefits once the beneficiary has begun collecting payments, he said in an interview, but health-care benefits can be modified or eliminated at any point, either unilaterally or through collective bargaining. That creates a worrisome uncertainty for retirees that is not likely to go away, he said.
Since 1994, when mandatory retirement for tenured faculty members became illegal under federal law, it has become common for universities to offer incentives to encourage faculty members to retire before age 70, the new survey shows. Institutions are also increasingly offering phased-retirement policies that may provide both professors and their employers with a smoother transition.
Ernst Benjamin, executive director of the AAUP, said phased-retirement programs allow universities "to continue to benefit from the services of many of the faculty that they want for a longer time and to be more flexible in how they handle things." Only 32 percent of responding institutions, however, said they now had phased-retirement programs.
Faculty members may be reluctant to see older tenured professors in their departments retire because their positions could then be converted into non-tenure-track positions, a cost-saving trend that could become a "serious problem," Mr. Benjamin said.
The shift may save institutions money in the short term, he explained, but it also weakens the capacity of departments to do specialized instruction or to produce cutting-edge research.
Additionally, the changing job market may discourage students from even pursuing doctoral degrees, Mr. Ehrenberg said. "So I think you have to worry about this issue," he said. "Who will be the faculty of the future?"