FYI, the proper terminology for this is “on the gripping hand.”
It sounds like they quite managed to conquer-and-divide younger versus older teachers at your institution.
But are you sure that salaries is where the money goes? How about overly fancy buildings? How much money do shareholders and the board of directors suck out of the institution? Has the school borrowed money on which it pays too much interest? Anything like that?
How about young and old march up together to whoever pulls the purse strings, and ask where the money went?
True.
The percentage of college budgets going to prof salaries just keeps shrinking and shrinking. More and more of the budget goes to non-classroom buildings, admin salaries, etc.
Keep in mind that most of those “gee whiz” salaries you hear about are paid out of grants. (And grants also pay overhead to keep the lights on, etc.) The college pays little to nothing of those big salaries.
At two places I worked 100% of my salary came from grants with my overhead bringing in even more money to the college directly. Tuition never figured into it.
Nonetheless the admin would play games to try and cut back on things even more at the expense of the profs.
Here is one thing that I have seen: I do believe that there is a natural progression where a person slows down in the last five years of their career: they don’t join as many committees, they don’t take part in new projects, they don’t learn new technology, they don’t spend as much time mentoring. Other people take up the slack and are usually genuinely happy to do so: the Grand Old Man (or woman) has contributed a lot to the institution, and still adds a lot of value.
However, what I have seen a few times is that someone gets to the end of that coasting period and find that they feel quite capable of continuing to work–but what they don’t realize is that they are only capable because others have been silently supporting them. So they keep working and others keep supporting them, because it’s a weird conversation to have–you never really talked about letting them step down, how do you talk about how they need to step up–especially when you look over the history of their time in the institution and they’ve been an absolute lion?
Should I reach this point, I really hope someone will tell me. People I really respect have not seen it when it was them.
I don’t think looking at it about age is the right way to do it. It’s more about whether you can afford to retire. That’s where I think the ethical issues lies. If I no longer need the money, I would feel bad about keeping people out who do need the money. Age only factors in in how much of their life they have left to learn another career.
Of course, a solution where I can keep on doing what I love and the others can earn money would be much better.
The college should staff the most competent people to serves as faculty, regardless of age, experience, etc.
I see at least three large issues with that view:
- The answer to “Can I afford to retire?” varies wildly from individual to individual. Can the person who wants to be able to afford extensive travel and fine food in their retirement years be ethically able to work much longer than someone who just wants to stay home and eat cat food until they die?
- It’s also very difficult to ascertain for sure when the threshold is met. How long one will live after retirement, what the economy will do over that time, will current entitlement programs continue as is are all variables that can’t be known for sure. Better to keep working and saving to make sure one can retire as they wish.
- Basing retirement on when one can afford it, if that could be done, could possibly increase early retirements but would self select for the most successful - who are often the best and brightest - leaving the earliest and result in a slowdown of progress while the younger replacements gain the same level of experience.