Seniority Incentives: A Golden Opportunity

This January, a law went into effect making mandatory retirement ages illegal. This ruling means that senior tenured faculty may stay in their posts as long as they wish. Harvard's senior faculty can now stay on many years longer than they expected. As a result, few younger academics will receive tenure.

Though many senior faculty maintain their productivity in teaching and research well into their careers, newly tenured professors have an advantage. Because they must be at the top of their talents to be invited to Harvard (or, rarely, tenured from within Harvard's existing ranks),their abilities are all but guaranteed by the gruelling tenure process.

Since 1989, Harvard has been studying several possibilities for encouraging senior faculty to retire, thus opening spots for younger academics. Yet, so far, Harvard has come up with little in the way of effective incentives.

Harvard needs to be more aggressive in exploring options. The University of Chicago, for example, offers a lump-sum payment that encourages retirement. The legal robustness of this plan has not yet been tested, but perhaps Harvard should try it until a better alternative can be found.

The main reason for Harvard's timidity has been fear of charges of age discrimination. Fortunately, an incentives program does not necessarily have to be based on age. Harvard could avoid charges of age discrimination by relying on seniority; for example, incentives could become available after 20 years of service to the University.

This kind of program will have different implications for different faculty members. For 27-year-old Professor of Mathematics Noam D. Elkies, the incentives will be available when he's in his 40s. For most others, inducements will kick in when they're in their 50s or 60s. In any case, the plan's implications will not be based on age. Every organization has a right to give rewards based on seniority, and Harvard should take advantage of its right.

A change to a slightly younger faculty would provide enough funds to pay for "golden handshake" opportunities, as retirement incentives are commonly called. Since a newly tenured professor makes only about one-half of what the most senior one makes, a shift of only one position could make quite a lot of extra money available.

The purpose of an incentives program is not at all to shun senior faculty. Professors emeriti could still teach classes as they do now, if selected on the basis of their ability by their departments. But Harvard does need the enthusiasm and vitality of younger teachers, if only to inspire the same eagerness in its students.