The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

Little should be made of this issue on the basis of age and retirement. The population has aged during this period as well as the professoriate and generally the age at retirement has been reduced since the abolition of compulsory retirement. I wonder that the average of retirement for faculty was not examined. My own experience is that few faculty continue beyond 68 and many of us find 62 a good age to move on to other things. I suspect that the average age of new faculty has also risen during this period, though I have not seen data on this point. I might mention that the last time the idea of the faculty becoming too old was raised, the response was to freeze tenure appointments, hardly beneficial to the young. That younger faculty offer something better is hardly true on the face of it. These shifts in age composition have a way of working themselves out over rather short periods of time, but we repeatedly see such analysis compromised by a lack of appreciation of demographic processes.

: -- Wm. W. Pendleton, Professor Emeritus, Emory University (posted 8/30, 9:45 a.m., E.D.T.)

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