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THE UNCAPPING OF RETIREMENT

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."

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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.

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