THE UNCAPPING OF RETIREMENT

Since 1989, Faculty committees have been bending their brains to find the financial answer to a law which allows professors to remain at work indefinitely. Now the legal deadline has passed, and the University is still seeking a solution.

When Professor of Biology Ernest E. Williams reached the age of 70 in 1980, he retired; he had no choice.

For Williams, the loss of contact with students came too soon. "I've been reconciled to my operations at the moment, but I'd like to have contact with students," says Williams, who is now an emeritus professor. "I was interested in students and liked them, and frankly they keep us young."

Since January 1, however, when federal law made mandatory retirement illegal, professors like Williams have faced a choice about whether to retire at 70 or even at all.

And while the new law brings more opportunity for professors considering their futures in academic life, it also brings the possibility of an aging faculty, of a financial drain on University resources and of limited tenure openings for rising junior faculty.

Harvard has fought to answer such concerns with nonfinancial benefits offered to retired professors, but an ongoing University wide benefits review has failed to come up with a financial solution in time for the January 1 legal deadline.

Such a financial solution could have a major effect--far more than the nonfinancial benefits--on people's retirement decisions.

"Of course the financial piece of it will only be part of the calculus people will use in deciding to retire, but it's an important part of it," says Assistant Dean for Academic Planning Joseph J. McCarthy.

Health care--which, adminstrators say, is very generous in Harvard's package--is a major concern for professors nearing retirement, says Reisinger Professor of Slavic Literature Jurij Striedler, who is considering emeritus status.

"An emphasis should be on guaranteeing retired professors and retired people at Harvard for medical care," he says. "That is a problem care," he says. "That is a problem why sometimes professors who would like to go into retirement hesitate to go."

A University-wide committee chaired by Provost Jerry R. Green has been mulling the problems of health care and benefits packages since he became provost, and various Faculty committees on retirement have existed since 1989.

But while other institutions like the University of Chicago have initiated benefits changes to push faculty toward retirement, Harvard still deliberates about what to do.

The Chicago solution, a lump-sum payment to encourage early retirement, is not the best solution of Harvard and may be illegal, says McCarthy.

But Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says some modification in Harvard's retirement benefits and health plan must occur for the sake of the University's finances, not just to encourage retirement.

"We do not know yet if or how such benefits will be modified, but some changes will probably be necessary," says Knowles. "University-wide, we are spending more in benefits than we are paying into the benefits pool."

The nonfinancial benefits enacted by the FAS last year were part of an effort to ease faculty voluntarily into emeritus status without financial changes dependent on the University-wide benefits process.

Emeritus faculty may now teach one course a year, either in General Studies or in a department, and they may participate in tutorials and advising as well.

"I think people don't want to feel like they're dropping off a cliff," says Professor of Sociology Theda Skocpol. "We're trying to turn it into a sort of phase instead of a disjuncture."

Although emeritus professors may not receive their former offices or library studies, Ryan says that facilities can go far in making emeritus status more appealing.

"Things like having some kind of a study available, even if not your old office, there would be someplace where you could hang your hat and do your work," says Ryan. "Some of these things make [emeritus status] very palatable."

But Ryan emphasizes the need for emeritus faculty to teach departmental courses only at department request. "Someone shouldn't be in the position of quasi-owning a course that they would keep even after retired," she says.

Along with improving emeritus status nonfinancially, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has expanded pre-retirement financial advice--including individual counselling and a new "Benefits Hotline" for faculty.

The idea behind the new services is that helping faculty understand their investment and pension options will make the retirement decision as financially neutral as possible.

"I think what [the expanded financial advice] has done is to get younger people more focused on it, because where once the decision was made for them, now they'll have to make a decision," says Associate Director of Retirement Programs Marianne L. Howard.

Knowles says he feels confident that the combination of last year's new nonfinancial reforms and the new advice network will have some effect on retirement decisions.

"I do think that our improving of emeritus status and better advice will help, in the sense that faculty will make better informed decisions, to a state where they're still part of the community," Knowles says.

But most faculty and administrators are not quite so confident.

They say that even with the added incentives of improved emeritus status and better financial advice, the actual outcome of retirement choices under the new law remains too difficult to predict. It could range from a huge glut of aging professors to a minor shift in Faculty retirement patterns.

"That was the big mystery for our committee," says Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan, a member of the FAS committee on retirement. "I think it's extremely difficult to predict."

Emeritus Professor of Education and Social Structure Nathan Glazer says that the lack of incentives for professors to retire could induce faculty members to stay indefinitely.

"In principle I'm against the age discrimination act as it affects faculty," Glazer says. "In most businesses people are perfectly happy to give up work...For academic people in elite research universities they're doing very little they don't want to do, and there's very little incentive to retire."

Both Knowles and Thomas Professor of Anthropology Sally F. Moore expect a possible shift in retirement patterns, but not a terribly dramatic one.

"As soon as Harvard shifted from 65 to 70, people stayed on, so one assumes it will shift again," says Moore, who is a member of the FAS retirement committee. "It isn't a very large number each year. It isn't as if the whole faculty will stay forever."

The people who are most concerned about the new retirement law might well not be the administrators, however, but the younger generation of scholars. They could see years of fruitless job searches if aging faculty maintain control of their scarce tenured posts.

"What no one wants to see is a slowing of the movement that's usually been occurring as people move up through the ranks," says Ryan. "You want the whole system to remain quite porous."

As junior faculty members vie for tenure, each professor who stays past the traditional retirement age means a tenure position still not available.

"It's obvious that if there are fewer positions opening up and if the number of positions isn't expanded, then the chances for promotion from within would be adversely affected," says John J. McCole, associate professor of History and Social Studies. "Anything that shrinks the pool is cause for concern."

Even farther in the future, as the law's long term effects begin to manifest, graduate students see cause for concern if professors don't choose to retire.

Graduate Student Council (GSC) Treasurer David M. Porter sees problems for GSAS students in the new retirement policy.

"Originally when a lot of us started these PhD. programs, we thought the job market would be good," says Porter. "As long as professors hold on, that means that the predicted need for new professors will not happen in the mid to late '90s as predicted...That really has a negative effect on the job market."

GSC President Carlos Lopez calls the new law "double edged" because good scholars can remain active but "if faculty fail to make way for the new generation of scholars, that will create problems for the upcoming generation of new scholars."

"The fact that there isn't mandatory retirement could be problematic," he says.

Ryan looks beyond the tenure problem, to how the new law could affect junior faculty even before the review for a permanent post.

"It's not just a matter of tenure," she says. "It's also a matter of who teaches courses in particular areas. Even if a junior faculty member is not personally expecting tenure, they might very well want to teach a course now taught by a senior professor. You don't want to stagnate."