Mandatory retirement in academia

This is probably not an issue taking up a lot of mental and emotional space for most Savage Minds contributors and readers, but it is currently the hot topic at my institution (the University of Alberta). The U of A has a mandatory retirement age for faculty (65), and there is a movement underway — one that probably will be successful — to overturn it.

The principal argument against the policy is that mandatory retirement is simple age-discrimination (which, undoubtedly, it is). The sub-arguments are various, but an important one is that 65 year old people are to a significant extent not as “old” nowadays as they may have been a generation ago — they are healthy, productive, keen of mind, and so on. Again, this is indisputable.

And yet. Having just come off the job market myself, and having lots of friends on the job market, and feeling responsible for rising graduate students who will soon enter the job market, I have some qualms about going all Grey Panther on this issue. As far as I can tell, the academic job market has important “zero sum game” qualities. One domain of limited flexibility is infrastructure (offices and labs): finding creative ways to assume salaries continue for longer and pension-collection is forestalled won’t open up new funds to expand the physical spaces that house active faculty.

I wonder, too, whether the faculty most interested in the abolishment of mandatory retirement now were also among those most thoughtful about the generational structure of their disciplines 10 and 20 years ago: when they were admitting graduate students and attracting undergraduate majors. That being said, I concede that mandatory retirement is discriminatory. So it is a controversy about which I am not quite sure how to feel. Thoughts?

4 thoughts on “Mandatory retirement in academia

  1. I’ve always thought that academics don’t start producing their best work until way past middle age. Forcing academics to retire at 65 would be cutting them down in the prime of their (research) life.

  2. Most research I’m aware of shows that the vast majority of academics produce their best work by the time they are in their 40s.

    Of course, mandatory retirement is discriminatory although it is in everyone’s best interest but the aged professors themselves. But the same pattern exists in every other career on the planet right now. Mid- and upper-level positions are filled by people who won’t retire (often because they can’t afford private health insurance or have insufficient savings to live for 20-30+ years post-retirement) leaving no room for the younger generation to move up. This is particularly a problem, I understand, in Japan with its worlds-oldest-population.

    Then again, I have little sympathy for those going into academia who weren’t aware of this nature of the field. My friends who have gone that route have all entered the game thinking they have something close to a right to find gainful employment in academia simply because they love their field.

  3. I think that forced retirements will add to the greater good of the academic community as jobs would be made available to younger scholars and these older scholars can be converted into more beneficial uses for the society at large.

  4. I’m in the U.S., so no mandatory retirement. In our system however by around age 65 your pension is about matching your salary, so in effect if you stay you are actually paying to work. Part of this is a generous pension plan (based on the one the state legislature gave themselves) but I think that to a considerable extent anyone who stays after 65 is less likely to be deadwood and likely to be generally good faculty members you would like to keep around.

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