An ethical/moral obligation? Retiring to make way for newer faculty . . .

In My Humble Opinion
1

I really don’t have an answer to the following, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this past year and would like to hear others’ perspectives. FYI: I’m 50yo, no spring chicken, and have taught here 11 years.

Our college is going through a pretty serious contraction in enrollment; many schools are experiencing the same problems because, demographically, there are far fewer college-aged young adults in this generation. Thusly, in the last two years we have had a rapid decline in registration and therefore full-time faculty have been losing courses and some are struggling just to make load. Most of us also depend on teaching overload credits, as our base salaries are on the low side, and these opportunities are rapidly disappearing.

We have a significant strata of faculty who have been here for 40+ years and are 72 - 80+ years-old. Many of them have been offered wildly generous retirement incentive packages, but most are refusing the opportunity. As enrollment stagnates, later generations of faculty are struggling to make a living. I do need to add that many of the older faculty are fantastic teachers and, save a few, physical/mental decline isn’t an issue.

So I’m of several minds here: on one hand, I’d like to retire in 15 years and enjoy the fruits of working for almost 50 years – I won’t be rich, but I’ll be comfortable and I do feel that newer generations of faculty deserve the opportunities that older folks’ retirements create.

On the other hand, I don’t want anyone telling me to retire if I want to work until I’m 102. I’ve earned that right, dammit, and those snot-nosed young’uns can just fight it out in the jungle.

On the third hand (foot?), there is a possibility that the institution will be forced to start letting newer strata of faculty go – there’s already been a first-round purge of administrators. Do faculty who have been here for decades and can retire comfortably with the severance, retirement pension, and social security have some kind of obligation to step aside? (I’m not claiming that all older faculty are financially comfortable, but many are making really big bank).

Interested in hearing perspectives . . .

2

There are certainly no moral or ethical obligations to make way for younger people, regardless of what industry you are in. Certainly youth would offer certain advantages in certain industries. Like if you were a fashion model or in a very physical job like professional sports or the military. But I think there is enough of a false sense of the superiority of youth in many industries (such as tech) that it doesn’t need to be encouraged by implying some moral imperative.

3

The fault in your premise is that your position would be preserved. I went into graduate school (many years ago) being assured that there would be lots of open positions as that generation of faculty members retired. Instead, the universities cut tenure-track positions, grossly inflated administrative (sales) salaries, and started exploring the MOOCs. You probably wouldn’t be giving your job to a deserving bright young thing.

4

The previous generation had no obligation to make way for you, you have no obligation to make way for those coming up. That said, if I was in a position to retire comfortably, I’d be out the door in a flash. YMMV. TANSTAAFL. Bring your own towel. Don’t panic. FNORD.

5

Update to the very latest tech, and watch them start jumping at those severance packages!:smiley:

6

Not directly addressing the question that you asked, but I think it sure would be nice if universities offered enticements to older people to come be nontraditional college students and fill up some of those empty seats. I may do it anyway when I’m 70 but colleges could sweeten the deal by thinking about the overall situations of non-traditionally-colleged-aged people and what kinds of services and accommodations and financial arrangements and so forth could benefit from a rethink and an adjustment or two.

7

I lean towards the “If you are good at what you do, and you can still do it, stay as long as they’ll have you or as long as you want” side.

8

Something like that actually happened with a few folks :slight_smile:

As I said in my OP, I’m conflicted about these questions/situations as well; “moral/ethical” wasn’t a good way to put it. And, at age 50, I certainly wouldn’t stand aside and sacrifice my position and salary for someone else (I worked damn hard to get here!) And maybe I’ll feel the same way when I’m 60, or 70, or 98 . . .

I wanted to add that some of my musings are influenced by the sudden and tragic death of my neighbor who, at age 60, was getting set to retire and tour the world. In a horrible real-life cliche, her retirement papers were on the kitchen table when she dropped dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. It’s made me think a lot about what defines my life and how many things I want to do before crossing the Rainbow Bridge and joining my herd of doggies and kitties.

9

So, so true. I think my generation of grad-schoolers may be the last to have enjoyed the possibility of a TT job (especially in the humanities). These jobs are becoming extinct even for shiny new grads, and God help anyone who loses a tenured job and is dumped on the market . . .

One bright spot is that some significant cuts are being made to our grossly bloated administrative bureaucracy. I hate to see anyone lose their job, but the institution did lose sight of the fact that teaching is our central mission and we didn’t need eight VPs of the Department of Widgetry and PowerPointing.

10

Since college is about teaching students, which scenario serves them (us) best?

11

If you are well off, I do think that it’s a moral obligation to retire to make way for newer staff.

At my Fortune 100 company, we have managers who have been with the company for 35+ years and are refusing to take packages/retire at 55, which was de rigueur drop dead retirement date for prior generations IMO, they are benefit hogs. Not only is their pay scale much higher than new hires, but they also get a whopping 18% of their pay in profit sharing. They benefited handsomely from stock increases and splits in the 80s and 90s. Oh, and they also enjoyed sweetheart benefits (e.g. 100% of health care costs paid by the company) for all but the last 10 years of their career.

By contrast, new hires in the same role will never make what the 50+ year olds make now, as the pay curve has been flattened significantly. Their profit shares maxes out at 6%. They have to pony up several hundred bucks a month for health care. And our stock hasn’t done diddly squat in the past several years.

To give a little perspective, the lowest paid admin who was hired in the 70s and 80s will retire a millionaire because of the profit sharing plan alone. Mid-to-upper level management will retire with much more than that.

So yeah, if you’re a 58 year old with $5M sitting in your profit sharing, I do think that they have a moral obligation to retire. Go off and live the good life, for the health of the company, and so that someone else can raise their family, just like they did.

12

Some things I’ve seen colleges do with “excess” tenured faculty.

  1. Stop paying them. They are still listed as faculty. They can come in and do stuff like vote in committees and such. But they have no assigned classes or anything that work rules would require payment for.

Even at places where cutting faculty pay to zero can’t happen, there’s usually a system in place where their “base” salary is quite low. So they have to work for less money but assigned a full load. People take the hint and go.

  1. Colleges can declare financial emergencies and just fire people. I’ve seen this happen at one place where I was a student. The faculty were scaaaaared.

Dropping enrollment means less income means financial emergency.

Neither of these specifically address age nor should it. That in no way, shape or form should be a criteria for moving people out. If an old person is doing the job better than a young you, keep the old prof.

13

What type of college is it(public or private, for profit), and how large a threat is it to your college’s financial well-being if nobody takes the offer?

14

I would say no, and more emphatically no if the question is whether people have any right to put pressure on older workers to ‘do the right thing’ and retire just because they are older.

However there’s an important implicit assumption in your run down, at least it seems. Which is that the university, in a downsizing, has to keep the most senior people rather than simply evaluating who adds the most net value compared to their cost. That doesn’t change my answer, but IMO is something more deserving of reevaluation that instituting any kind of social custom which puts pressure on older workers to retire who don’t want to.

And while another poster gave a differing opinion based on the example of a private sector company, at least in theory a private sector company can lay off older workers if their productivity doesn’t actually justify their (typically) higher pay for a given position. In theory, subject to the fact that age discrimination suits IME are highly likely if you lay off people over 40 other than according to seniority, or at least the threat of them to get a better severance package (IME generally, not drawing 100% absolute conclusions about the whole world as some people seem to assume whenever a generalization based on experience is made, that’s what I saw based on quite a number lay offs I was personally involved with, though people are free to tell me as disembodied voices that what I personally saw repeatedly didn’t really happen or ‘of course’ was a fluke, that’s the part of the beauty of the internet after all :slight_smile: )

15

What does this mean? The absolute number of college students is basically as high as it’s ever been, and it is projected to keep growing.

16

In the Northeast many (public) colleges are in enrollment trouble. According to the stats from several ed assoc in the Mid-Atlantic there is a demographic sag.

17

Public community college. I don’t have the specifics on fiscals, I do know that 25 or so folks have been offered cash packages plus benefits between $350-500k; I think this indicates some urgency about finances. Six people have taken the offer.

18

But will it decline if they retire? They have a purpose in life right now, a reason to get up & get out every day. They have a lot of knowledge, literally a lifetime’s worth that they can use when teaching. How tough or mentally challenging is it to, say, sit & give directions at a hospital reception desk? I see retirement a long way off for me for just that reason.

19

My father was a professor and when he retired, he was offered an emeritus position.

20

I took early retirement at age 63 and have not regretted it. I still have an office and am still publishing. But I was not replaced. So do it if it pleases you but not in the hopes that you are making way for a deserving younger person.