In 1986 the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was amended to abolish mandatory retirement for tenured faculty members in colleges and universities effective January 1, 1994. Will this "uncapping" of the retirement age adversely affect the vitality of academic departments or the prospects of advancement for younger scholars? In a definitive study of faculty retirement in the arts and sciences, Albert Rees and Sharon Smith seek to answer this question. Basing their conclusions on original data collected from thirty-three colleges and universities, they do much to resolve an issue that is a frequent subject of discussion in the academic world and in the press. Rees and Smith reveal that the ending of mandatory retirement will have much smaller effects than those generally anticipated--so small that there is no justification for efforts to have Congress continue exempting faculty members from the ADEA past 1994, the date that the exemption is now due to expire. In addition to their data on retirement patterns, the authors make use of surveys of senior faculty and retired faculty to explore attitudes toward retirement.
Originally published in 1991.
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SHARON P. SMITH is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs for National University and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the National University system. Prior to this appointment, she was Dean of the Faculty of Business, Dean of the Schools of Business Administration, and Professor of Management Systems at Fordham University. Author of two books and over two dozen articles and research reports on labor policy, management, and economics, she is a member of the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and was a member of the board of the Security Traders Association Securities. Previously, she was a senior research economist at Princeton University, a senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a district manager with AT&T, and served as president of the NASDAQ Stock Market Education Foundation.
