Retirement: A Moral Issue

Crimson: What do you all see as the general implications for higher education of such a bill which eliminates mandatory retirement?

Mahoney: Well, let me go back to the position that I've been taking on platforms up and down the country on this issue. We've made some progress in this country as far as racism, some progress on sexism, but we've done nothing as far as ageism is concerned. We are now in a new period. The demographics indicate that within the next twenty years we'll have something on the order of 17 or 18 percent of the men and women of this country who are 65 or over, not 60 but 65 or over. We're going to have more people who have the physical and mental capacity to continue to work and to make a useful contribution. I feel, then, that this bill will end discrimination. I think it will be very helpful as far as an increasingly important segment of the population is concerned. I think also that in so far as the students and the graduate students are concerned, that they have the right to get the best, and in their field of academics it does take some time to be recognized as one of the best. There is talk about the higher paid faculty. Well that argument is an economic argument, not a moral argument. One doesn't get to be a higher paid member of the faculty early on. One has to survive a pretty rigorous competitive system to be productive and to be a good teacher.

Cullitin: Speaking for MIT, there are reasons that in an intellectual environment there needs to be the opportunity for the young people who are right out of graduate school and that the continuance of people beyond 70 is going to limit that. The other reason has to do with the tenure concept. People do go through a very rigorous evaluation to receive tenure, and it's a commitment for a period of time. Because of that, there have been no major evaluation systems designed for faculty past the tenure forum or really any kind of evaluation of performance. It also has been that there has been very little loss of tenure for anyone. The rules are really very strenuous.

Crimson: Professor Bloomfield, how do you feel about mandatory retirement for professors?

Bloomfield: I do feel that elminating mandatory retirement hinders opportunities for promotion and advancement, for very many people. I'm inclined to think that some kind of special arrangement could be made for people over 70 to be allowable for you to continue. That I believe. Why not ask for some of these people who are still in good shape and want to continue to teach say one course of the year. Perhaps they also wouldn't want to be paid. But Rosovsky is very much afraid of it. It is discrimination in some sense, but, in a way. I don't think its terrible to be perfectly honest. I take a middle position. I would say. In some kind of way I think the University would lose a great deal. It is discrimination, but I can think of more serious types of discrimination.

Mahoney: If they have the mental and physical capacity to continue and want to continue, they should have the opportunity, that's all I'm saying.

Crimson: Do you see any merit in having an amendment that would exempt universities?

Mahoney: I personally do not. One of the questions I would raise is what is the magic in 65, what is the magic in 70. It's purely arbitrary. In other words, we're playing with numbers. Historically, if you look into university acceptance of retirement at age 65, it goes back to the 1880's, to Bismarck's time, when he was putting through these welfare and social justice programs. Somebody just said all right, we're going to pay them a pension when they retire at 65. That's the magic of 65--it is purely a convention, and he chose 65 because at that time only four in a hundred lived to be 65. It was a very almost sadistic trick. I see no magic, whether it be in a university or anyplace else, in 65 or 70.

Culliton: The worry that I have is that without a retirement age, every single person is going to have to be evaluated to see whether in comparison to other individuals they're the best contributors and that's the part which I don't see is necessary...It's very hard to evaluate productivity.

Crimson: Is it fair for Universities to be exempted from this law and not businesses?

Mahoney: We've reached the state in this country where there is no retirement for people in the public sector...Why is it okay for people in the public sector to continue working and not for people in the private sector. If you're in government, there is no retirement at age 70, who make an exception of the universities. It seems to me that people are more productive by the time they're 70. They are people of mature judgement, people who are experienced. They have something to contribute. It seems to me that the Universities have a challenge to try and find ways and means of dealing with this new law so that it will be. This is a moral issue.

Culliton: I agree that it is a moral issue. How ever what is happening is that we have a population that is aging, the student population is declining. It's a fact that there is just not the money to support senior faculty forever.

Bloomfield: I think it's a very good idea to allow those who can to go on teaching.

Culliton: Additionally, this bill would make less faculty positions available to minorities, which would be extremely detrimental.

We've made some progress in this country as far as racism and sexism, but we've done nothing as far as ageism is concerned. --Thomas H.D. Mahoney

'I take a middle position. It is discrimination, but I can think of more serious types of discrimination.'   --Morton Bloomfield