Schools' Efforts

The goal for Harvard, then, is to make retirement attractive for professors--but not so attractive that too many faculty members take the University up on the offer, as happened at the University of California at Berkeley. Please see sidebar, this page.

One extreme, Rudenstine points out, would be to pay every faculty member a large sum to retire. The other extreme would be not to bother trying to induce faculty to retire. The challenge, he says, is finding something in the middle.

The degree of challenge differs significantly from faculty to faculty--and perhaps it's greatest in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

More than 50 of the 700 plus members of the FAS are over the age of 65, as compared to five in the Education School, four in the Divinity School and five at the Law School, according to FAS Dean Jeremy R. Knowles.

In addition, many FAS professors--particularly in the humanities--do not have the lucrative consulting opportunities available to faculty at the professional schools.

And the environment in FAS is cozy and rewarding.

"By the time you reach senior professorship status there, the teaching assignments are not onerous, you have a great deal of freedom, in effect your life has been much more integrated with a given academic field and you want to continue work with your graduate students," says Professor of Education and Social Structure Emeritus Nathan Glazer, who was a member of the FAS and Education School faculty.

In 1993, FAS took several steps to enhance both the status of emeritus professors and the incentives to retire.

On May 4 of that year, the Faculty approved a non-financial benefits package designed to satisfy retired professors' thirst for intellectual stimulation.

Retired professors are now able to offer first-year seminars, house seminars, General Education and Core courses and selected departmental courses "if there is not an active faculty member available to teach a course."

Emeritus professors are also allowed to participate in departmental and administrative services, can have office and laboratory space and may apply for grants for faculty research.

FAS also allows professors to participate at half-time status at half their salary for up to two years as a transition to retirement, according to Knowles.

"In the FAS we certainly hope that the new steady state (post-no-mandatory-retirement) will not mean a significantly older faculty on average," Knowles says in a written statement. "...We want to maintain vibrancy, new energy and new approaches, in all FAS departments."

The Medical School faculty has traditionally had more associate and assistant professors than senior faculty so the age distribution is more skewed, University administrators say.