As a profession, we need to have a conversation about faculty retirement — in no small part because conversations about retirement in academe are so difficult (and, in some cases, even illegal) to have.
Our hiring procedures for screening candidates at the start of an academic career have been widely discussed. (And even parodied: See Julie Schumacher’s 2014 novel, Dear Committee Members.) What we talk about far less, though, is the much murkier process at the other end of the career arc — the decision about when and how to step away from the profession.
Let me open in the spirit of full disclosure: I’m a late-career academic. (How odd it feels to write those words, given that I still suffer from occasional grad-school nightmares.) I started full-time college teaching in 1990; I’m now 63. So I’m shy of the traditional retirement age of 65, but not by much. And although I’m writing this because I’ve been thinking about senior colleagues, I’ve come to realize that this piece is about me, too. I’ve been teaching for more than three decades now at five different institutions, and I’ve seen a lot of professors wrestling with (and sometimes avoiding entirely) the decision of when to retire.
First, a little history: Back in 1968, when the American Association of University Professors published the first edition of “The Redbook” (its policies and reports on topics like tenure, academic freedom, and governance), American colleges and universities required faculty members to retire at age 65. In 1982 higher education bumped up its mandatory-retirement age to 70 and, four years later, received an exemption when Congress banned mandatory-retirement policies for most employers. Since 1994, when the federal exemption expired, institutions have been prohibited from forcing professors to retire at any age.
Legislating retirement at age 65 or even 70 is the very definition of arbitrary, and surely Congress was correct to make it illegal. (Since I’ll turn 70 before the end of this decade, that is perhaps especially clear to me!) But it’s equally clear, from my experience as both a faculty member and a department chair, that doing away with mandatory retirement has left faculty members with little guidance on the matter.
Yes, an age-based rule of 65, or 70 — or 85, for that matter — is a blunt instrument that doesn’t take into account the different rates and ways in which we age, our different life situations, the different needs of our academic units, or the differing career trajectories in different disciplines. One-size-fits-all retirement mandates are admirably clear but frustratingly unnuanced. But in their absence, how can we help colleagues, and ourselves, reach thoughtful and well-informed decisions about retirement?
Let’s begin by considering the benefits — to both the faculty member and the institution — of timely retirement. Who is harmed when faculty members continue in their role longer than they’re truly effective?
- Our students. There comes a point in every career — unless we’re self-aware enough to retire before we reach it — when our experience, expertise, and wisdom are overshadowed by our distance from our students and their lives, and in some cases by our declining abilities. Early in my career I taught with a senior colleague whose pedagogy had clearly become compromised. His courses consisted primarily of playing audiotapes of literary texts to fill the class hour; students reported that he would sometimes nod off by the end of the period. I never saw his course evaluations, but the whole matter became public when, during a department discussion of mandating writing assignments, this colleague (whose only graded work for the course was multiple-choice exams) protested, “But my eyes aren’t good enough to grade essays!” Having said the quiet part out loud, he opted to retire later that term.
- Our junior colleagues. In my field at least (and English is hardly alone), the pool of bright, ambitious, well-trained junior scholars far exceeds available faculty positions. Of course it’s no one faculty member’s responsibility to correct for the nationwide erosion of tenure-track and other permanent faculty positions by retiring to make room for the next generation. But there are younger scholars, teachers, and creators who may deserve the spot that we’re holding onto. A senior professor who continues to occupy a line after his or her teaching and research have fallen off precipitously is, in a very real sense, nipping a promising young career in the bud.
- Our senior scholars. Finally — and for me, most painfully — our unregulated approach to retirement harms senior faculty members themselves. Many years ago I worked with a talented professor who, by the time I got to know him, had become consumed by a vicious cycle of diminishing returns. This professor had ceased to be an active scholar; at the same time, student demand for his courses and mentorship was on the wane. Those and other factors resulted in small or no annual raises, which left him grumpy and resentful, which (I thought) further alienated potential students. Falling off from the pinnacle of a very successful career, he found each year a bit more bleak than the last. As a friend, I wanted desperately to help him find a way to break the cycle and retire with dignity. I never did.
I want my faculty colleagues — and myself — to go out on a high note. In the house where I grew up, we idolized the Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax because, as my mother often told me, “he went out on top.” (There was also a rumor, which at this distance in time cannot be confirmed, that my mother had once gone out with him.)
But “going out on top” is really only half the story. The arthritis in his pitching elbow had become so severe that Koufax felt he had no choice, retiring at the age of 30. But those last six years of his career, during which he won the Cy Young Award a then-unprecedented three times, have never been equaled. Yes, Koufax retired because of a career-ending medical condition, but he went out at the top of his game.
The announcement of your retirement should take your colleagues by surprise, until its aptness slowly dawns on them. I’ve known faculty members who went the surprise route, and it sparked a joyful celebration of their careers. They left while they were still valued by students, and before their record was tainted by secret faculty speculation about when they would step down.
Ours is a profession (unlike Major League Baseball) that values age, experience, and maturity. We call it “wisdom.” But an important component of this type of wisdom is knowing when to call it quits. Senior professors often continue to enjoy — and believe ourselves still good at — the work. A colleague more than a decade older than I am is fond of saying, “Why would I retire now? I’m at the top of my game!” I only wish I were confident that her students had the same assessment.
When to say when. There are, then, many good reasons to retire at the “right” time — whenever that might be for each of us. What prevents us? In part, our indecision is deeply human. Retirement planning can be hard because most of us don’t want to face our mortality, and the waning of our gifts. But plenty of other factors also may make it difficult for a faculty member to make the call at the right moment.
One of the biggest has been the gradual shift over the past few decades from defined benefit (“pension”) to defined contribution (401[k] and 403[b]) retirement plans at colleges and universities. When I signed my first tenure-track contract, in 1991, I had the option of participating either in the state-sponsored pension plan or the “portable” retirement option (in this case, TIAA-CREF). Because I didn’t picture myself retiring from that first institution, I went with TIAA-CREF.
Having bounced around a few campuses in the years since, I surely made the right choice for me. But a defined-contribution plan carries an inherent risk not found in pension plans: A major economic downturn — like the stock-market crash of 2008 — can force faculty members to postpone retirement as they watch the value of their nest egg ebb. I certainly know faculty members whose retirement dates were pushed back after the 2008 downturn. The Dow is down 15 percent for the year as I write this, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some faculty retirements previously planned for 2022-23 will be put on ice as a result.
Some equally important factors, however, are less easy to quantify. For many of us, teaching and research aren’t simply what we do but who we are. They are a primary source of our identity, and it’s not clear who we’d be without them. Especially for those who have invested decades of time and personal energy into faculty work, external sources of meaning and community may be scarce. Some faculty members even believe that teaching “keeps them young” — though I would argue that students are being poorly served if they’re used to prop up someone’s professional identity.
For some faculty members the prospect of retiring is fraught because institutional conditions suggest it’s unlikely that they’ll be replaced. Rather than opening up room for a bright young colleague, their retirement may simply shrink the department by a tenure-track line.
Finally, personal factors, of which colleagues may be entirely unaware, come to bear on these decisions. It’s easy to forget in an institutional context that retirement is often a couple or family decision.
How can institutions help? On the financial front, retirement incentives can ease the financial burden on faculty members who would like to retire but can’t afford to. I recently spoke with an academic I hadn’t seen in a while, who, I was surprised to learn, would be retiring soon. The professor’s university had recently announced an incentive that would pay two full years’ salary to faculty members who retired before turning 68. My friend and the other faculty members who took the offer would be paid as though they were teaching two more years, but they would be free to start laying the foundations for the next chapter of their lives.
Such an incentive represents a significant upfront financial commitment by the institution, of course. If we assume, for argument’s sake, that a senior full professor is making twice as much as a new assistant professor, it would take the institution about four years to recover the cost (less if the retiring professor isn’t replaced immediately, as is often the case). But eventually the investment is recouped, and new energy and expertise are brought to the institution. It’s one way the college can encourage the creation of new positions for young scholars, something faculty members can’t be expected to fix on their own.
Another means that institutions have to soften the financial blow is to offer a phased-retirement plan. Details vary, but these programs typically allow a faculty member to move from full- to part-time work for a limited term (often three to five years) before full retirement. Such a plan costs the institution nothing extra (since it means cutting someone’s salary in half for half-time work), and allows the faculty member to decelerate in steps, rather than shift to unemployment overnight. And while I’m somewhat uncomfortable with performance labels, research has shown that phased retirement is most attractive to the least “productive” members of the faculty. That’s a secondary benefit of this type of plan for an institution.
Finally, colleges and universities can invest in the benefits provided to emeritus professors. Many academics fear retirement because they’ll lose their scholarly community. Robust emeritus-faculty programming — including office space, if possible — may make the transition a bit easier to contemplate. Many of us are ready to give up the classroom or the laboratory before we’re ready to give up collegial interactions and conversations.
What can department chairs do? First, let’s be clear about what you can’t do. You can’t initiate discussions with professors about the timing of their retirement. You can’t schedule a meeting with Bob and say, “Bob, I’m sensing that the thrill is gone: Certainly your student evaluations suggest as much. Isn’t it time for you to retire?” In your supervisory role, you are prohibited from broaching the topic. To do so would open you (and your college) to a claim of age discrimination. If you have specific questions about this, consult your institution’s HR or legal offices.
But while you can’t start the conversation, you can be available for one. And you can be prepared in the event that it arises. Retirements typically create salary savings for the institution. If you sense that a professor in your department may be thinking about retiring, an off-the-record conversation with your dean about what incentives the administration is willing to provide might be in order. You’ll have to keep that information in your back pocket until the day — should it arrive — that your colleague initiates the conversation.
Once again, repeat after me: You cannot open this conversation, even with a friend.
But friends and colleagues who are not chairs (or in some other supervisory relationship) can certainly have those conversations with one another. At my previous institution, chastened by the example of some senior colleagues who refused to “go gentle” into retirement, a friend and I made a pact: We each agreed to let the other know if/when the time had come to consider it. I left the institution before our agreement was ever tested; any such conversation would have been so difficult that I’m not sorry I never had to initiate it (or be its focus).
The trick, of course — and it’s almost unimaginably tricky — is to suggest that it might be time for a professor to retire, not because the work now being done isn’t up to snuff, but instead because the work that has been accomplished across the career amounts to a worthy legacy. This colleague has nothing left to prove, rather than nothing left to give. As faculty members, we are each somewhat different about why we entered this career, what we’ve done with it, and why we’re still in it. There’s certainly no formula for a discussion that needs to be incredibly personalized and the product of a genuinely caring relationship.
Clearly I don’t have all the answers, and I’m hoping this essay will spark lots of conversations. In his poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot suggests that the world ends “not with a bang but a whimper.” Don’t let your career, or those of your colleagues, end in the same kind of ignominy.
