Ending Mandatory Retirement for Tenured Faculty The Consequences for Higher Education (1991) / Chapter Skim
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2 EFFECTS OF UNCAPPING ON FACULTY RETIREMENT
2 EFFECTS OF UNCAPPING ON FACULTY RETIREMENT
Pages 21-48
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From page 21... ...
Since most colleges and universities now require tenured faculty to retire at 70, we examined historical information about faculty demographics and retirement behavior, supplemented by data from a few colleges and universities that have recently eliminated mandatory retirement. In answering these questions, we evaluated data on the number of faculty nearing retirement age (approximately 60-70 years)
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From page 22... ...
A rise in the average retirement age for current tenured faculty would reduce turnover, thereby limiting the number of tenure or tenure-track positions available for new faculty. Such a rise could be caused by an increase in the number of faculty working past age 70 after the elimination of mandatory retirement or by a large number of faculty retiring later than they do now, even if few or none waited until after age 70.
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From page 23... ...
In this section we concentrate on evidence of faculty age distributions and retirement patterns in higher education as a whole; in the next section we examine variations in retirement patterns by institutional type. Faculty Near Retirement Age Future retirement trends depend partly on present age distributions, that is, the number of faculty who will be old enough to consider retirement (e.g., age 60 or older)
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From page 24... ...
The data do not allow us to estimate the exact number of current, retired, and deceased faculty over age 65, but they do suggest that large numbers of faculty begin to retire around age 65 and that most retire before the current mandatory retirement age of 70. Over the past decade, the age distribution of faculty with doctorates (see Table 1)
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From page 25... ...
The national faculty surveys provide some evidence on the number of faculty at given ages to continue working past age 70, but their data do not support calculations of the proportion of faculty at any given age who retire that is, of retirement rates. Furthermore, most studies of faculty retirement concentrate on average retirement ages rather than the proportion of faculty retiring at higher than average ages.
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From page 26... ...
People who have worked for several decades with the expectation that they would retire around age 65 or 70 may be less likely to change their expectations than those just starting careers. Retirement Patterns at Uncapped Colleges and Universities Some states and individual colleges and universities have already eliminated mandatory retirement for tenured faculty.
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From page 27... ...
The committee requested data on faculty ages and retirement ages from state higher education systems and state retirement systems in uncapped states, and it conducted case studies at public and private uncapped institutions. In all, we found few faculty chose to continue working past age 70, although faculty retirement choices at many colleges and universities may have been affected by the introduction of retirement incentive programs as well as by uncapping.
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From page 28... ...
The presence of a mandatory retirement age was not one of them. In fact, for their sample of uncapped liberal arts colleges, the mean retirement age of tenured faculty is 1 year lower than the mean retirement age at capped institutions.
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From page 29... ...
In their study of faculty retirement ages at 101 colleges and universities, Lozier and Dooris (1990:14) found that the overall average retirement age at all institutions was less than 65: It was age 63.8 at institutions that raised the cap in 1982 and age 64.3 at institutions with a mandatory retirement age of 70 during the entire study period of 1981-1988.
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From page 30... ...
The number of faculty in any institution or field who would work past age 70 if allowed to do so can be discussed in terms of the number of faculty reaching age 70 and the proportion who would choose to keep working. The age distribution of faculty by selected subgroups reveals that some institutions and fields face a more immediate increase in the number of faculty nearing traditional retirement ages (60-70 years)
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From page 31... ...
and a correspondingly lower percentage of faculty members in the middle years. Fewer data are available on the age distribution of facult' at 2-year colleges: The SDR is not an appropriate source because approximately 75 percent of community college faculty do not have doctorates so other sources must be sought.
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From page 32... ...
~ dog I 4~ (~' ~W 25 ~ Engineering 20 ~20 (D 15 Cal 10 5 0 rat I, ,~§ n Age FIGURE 4 Faculty age profiles by field.
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From page 33... ...
Only a relatively small proportion of computer science and medical faculty members with doctorates will be approaching retirement over the next 15 years. In contrast, chemistry has a smaller-than-average percentage of faculty aged
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From page 34... ...
(The medical school faculty register of the Association of American Medical Colleges was large enough, but it was not structured to support analyses of changing faculty age distributions or retirement patterns.) The data we were able to collect from individual colleges and universities show varia
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From page 35... ...
The percentage of faculty who retire at age 70 may be more significant for projecting the number of faculty who will postpone retirement than data on average retirement ages. Lazier and Dooris (1990:44-47)
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From page 36... ...
, Colombians Arts and Sciences Division, Harvard, and Yale reported that more than one-half of their faculty who retired did so at age 70 or older (see Table 3~. The faculty retirement data thus suggest that at some research universities high proportions of faculty will choose to work past age 70, but the data do not suggest any way to distinguish which universities they will be.
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From page 37... ...
EFFECIS OF UNCAPPING ON FACULTY RE7IREME~ 37 TABLE 3 Faculty Who Retired at Age 70 or Older at Selected Universities Faculty Who Retired COFHE Years 1982-1986 University Covered 270 All Percent Percent California Institute of Technology 1985-1990 9 29 31 California, University of 1985-1988 149 429 35 Berkeley 47 108 44 Davis 16 84 19 Irvine 10 18 56 Los Angeles 43 97 44 Riverside 5 25 20 San Diego 12 25 48 San Francisco 8 22 36 Santa Barbara 8 39 20 Santa Cruz O 11 0 Chicago 1985-1990 55 86 64 Chicago Medical 1985-1990 11 28 39 Columbia 25 Columbia Arts and Sciences 1985-1990 28 52 53 Columbia Medical 1985-1989 0 17 0 Comell 1986-1990 40 162 25 38 Duke 1985-1990 37 95 39 38 George Washington 1989-1990 3 13 19 Haward Arts and Sciences 1986-1990 23 30 77 45 Harvard Medical 1986-1990 34 40 85 Illinois, University of 1985-1990 68 537 13 10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1986-1990 21 59 36 10 Miami, University of 1986-1990 14 49 28 Michigan, University of 1985-1990 46 284 16 31 Michigan State 1986-1990 45 302 15 31 Pennsylvania State 1987-1989 1 18 6 Pennsylvania, IJniversity of 1984-1988 46 120 38 66 School of Medicine 1984-1988 20 41 49 Princeton 1985-1990 21 54 39 56 Stanford Humanities and Sciences 1985-1989 16 4' 38 59 Texas A&M 1985-1989 7 77 9 Yale (excluding medical) a 1985-1990 42 55 76 83 Note: These universities had a mandatory retirement age of 70 for the years covered by the committee's data.
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From page 38... ...
The committee projected potential effects of uncapping on hiring, using data provided by three research universities that have a mandatory retirement age of 70 and at which a significant proportion of faculty may postpone retirement past age 70 if mandatory retirement is eliminated.
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From page 39... ...
, the university A committee assumed that the proportion of faculty who remain employed past age 65 would not change and that 25 percent of the faculty who worked past age 65 would continue to work past age 70. As a high estimate (i.e.
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From page 40... ...
Lastly, it could choose a policy other than constant budget, salary, or hiring, such as hiring a few more faculty members than it needs to fill openings but hiring fewer faculty annually than it has hired In past years. Table 4 summarizes the projected effects on each institution in terms of its increased salary costs or decreased hiring in comparison with its salary costs and hiring projected if no faculty member works past age 70 and faculty size is constant.
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From page 41... ...
, who modeled faculty flows for the colleges and universities belonging to the Consortium on Financing Higher Education as a way to estimate the effects of raising the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70. A constant faculty size does not imply a constant faculty budget.
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From page 42... ...
Constant Hiring When we incorporated the average salary for faculty in each age range in the constant faculty size models, we found that uncapping causes projected faculty salary budgets to increase from 1 to 3 percent, depending on the estimated proportion of faculty who postpone retirement past age 70. Continuing to hire new faculty in an attempt to cover new fields would be even more costly.
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From page 43... ...
For example, in response to predictions that 63,000 additional students~ver one-third of current student enrollmentwill enroll by 2005, University of California system officials report plans to create three new campuses and increase enrollment and faculty size at seven of its nine campuses. Although these plans may be delayed because of state budget cuts, the system as a whole and all but two of its campuses, may eventually hire faculty at or in excess of former rates regardless of whether faculty members continue to work past age 70.
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From page 44... ...
For most faculty members the effects of eliminating mandatory retirement would be positive: They gain the right to choose a retirement age without any upper age limit on the choice. For some this future benefit may be partly offset by limited job opportunities in the present: Research uni
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From page 45... ...
A number of studies have projected a national shortage of faculty by combining information about We overall faculty age structure with estimates of future student enrollments, student/faculty ratios, and rates of departure from academia (Atkinson, 1990; Bowen and Schuster, 1986; Bowen and Sosa, 1989; El-Khawas, 1990~. Some administrators and faculty have suggested that encouraging faculty to work past age 70 could alleviate impending shortages.
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From page 46... ...
Current faculty retirement patterns suggest most faculty choose to retire before the mandatory retirement age. The committee concludes: Higher education as a whole is likely to experience few changes in faculty behavior or demographics as a result of the elimination of mandatory retirement, and a significant number and proportion of faculty will choose to work past age 70 at a few research universities.
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From page 47... ...
The committee recognizes that analyzing data on faculty ages and retirement patterns is more complicated at colleges and universities with a larger faculty and, in some cases, multiple campuses than at a liberal arts college. Models like those we used in estimating effects on faculty turnover and salary budgets could assist administrators at these colleges and universities in estimating whether faculty are likely to choose to work past age 70.
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