Age Law Spurs Tenure Angst

In response to a new federal law rescinding the mandatory retirement age, the University will review its retirement system in an effort to improve incentives for professors to give up their lifetime posts when they turn 70, Harvard officials say.

President Derek C. Bok, the deans of the University's various faculties, and administrators from other schools are working to devise solutions to handle a tenure system which would be clogged up with aging professors if the mandatory age is abolished in 1993, said Thomas O'Brien, financial vice president.

"The University is studying school by school and faculty by faculty the whole system of retirements, pensions, and teaching after retirement," says John Shattuck, vice president for government and community affairs.

Effective January 1, the Age Discrimination Act of 1986 forbids employers from enforcing the mandatory retirement age of 70. An amendment permitting institutions of higher learning to continue retiring tenured professors and other employees for the next seven years was included following intense lobbying by Bok and other Harvard officials in Washington, D.C. last October.

Harvard officials attempted to convince Congressmen that without mandatory retirement older professors would block up the tenure system, denying younger academic talent opportunities for lifetime posts, says Shattuck.

Meanwhile Congress has commissioned the National Academy of Sciences Foundation to conduct a seven-year study on the effects that a suspension of mandatory retirement would have on the tenure process and higher education.

A large fraction of the faculties throughout the nation are composed of professors tenured in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the expanding student enrollments of the baby boom generation. "If the mandatory age is uncapped when these professors reach retirement age in the next 12 years, they will clog up the tenure system," says Shattuck.

Financial considerations also play a part in the University's desire to retire professors at 70. As student enrollments drop every year, the ratio of faculty members to students increases as available budget funds drop.

A Quiver of Solutions

Assuming that the exemption from the mandatory retirement age will not be renewed, the University is currently considering a number of possible plans to alleviate an anticipated clog up of the tenure system.

O'Brien says one alternative is an early retirement plan, similar to ones at Stanford and Washington University of St. Louis. "Professors could be offered increased pensions, other economic incentives, and half-time teaching" arrangements in exchange for retirement at 70, he says.

The University is also studying the idea of a system to evaluate annually the competence of tenured faculty members. "How will you be able to retire someone for failure to perform when the [current] tenure system does not involve the evaluation of professors from year to year?" asks O'Brien.

However the feasability of such a proposal, which Harvard officials stress is only under tentative consideration, would have to take into account the freedom of thoughts and ideas that the tenure system guards.

"Anyone who is looking at this question knows it is not an easy one, but instead is a very sensitive problem that must be treated very carefully," O'Brien says.

O'Brien emphasizes instead that the first task is to build a consensus that something must be done, rather than adopting any particular solution.

Harvard administrators hope to discuss the issue of the tenure system and the mandatory retirement age with members of the Harvard faculty, the deans, and other leaders of higher education this spring.

With these ideas in hand, officials expect to have a good idea of what needs to be done by the fall, says O'Brien.