The first part of the school's plan is a peer review process, begun a few years ago, that will periodically evaluate all faculty member.
According to Clark, retirement conversations about the future begin when faculty members are in their forties, centering on what their plans are for the next 10 years.
As members reach 50 the issue is raised as to when the faculty sees themselves retiring.
In addition to the review, McArthur's article announced the school's new incentive plan to help encourage faculty to retire early.
Under that plan, the school will offer two year's worth of compensation to professors who announce 15 years after gaining tenure (about age 50) that they will retire between 63 and 65. If they agree to retire at 66, they get an extra 1.4 year's worth of salary and at 67, an extra .7 year's amount.
Although officials say the plan was developed in careful consultation with lawyers, observers say it may well be in violation of federal age discrimination laws.
Several lawyers contacted say they see potential problems with the proposal, particularly because of the anti-waiver section of the federal statute.
Judith Vladeck, of Vladeck, Waldman, a leading New York law-firm on discrimination law, says the sees serious problems in the Business School plan.
"The proposal is clever, but may well violate the older workers protection act, because under the law you cannot waive your right to a claim or future claim," she says. "If someone came to me with a complaint, I would challenge the plan."
She says although the proposal is very careful to say it is voluntary, she could easily see a situation in which faculty members who announce at 50 that they will retire at 65 and later change their minds would come under a lot of pressure to retire.
"I find this repugnant, because there really is inherent in any discrimination a certain attitude...I don't think you can make a generality that some people are less able to perform because of their age," she adds.
Vice President and University General Counsel Margaret H. Marshall had no comment on the legality of any specific proposal.
But many observers say that they doubt the plan will create any serious upheaval both because of the multitude of private sector consulting jobs that many have and the generally high nature of their salaries.
In addition the school has been able to induce professors to retire by improving the working conditions for emeritus faculty.
"I retired in 1989 [when the mandatory retirement law was in effect], but I would not have kept on teaching. The dean set up a nice situation...he built us a new building where we have own nook, our own secretaries and a place we can keep our books and can give a lecture," says Straus Professor of Business of History Emeritus Alfred D. Chandler Jr. "He did that very much on purpose--before we had a place known, as death row where you shared an office with three or so others after you retired."
Straus adds that the access to a typing service enables him to write at home and come in to use library and pick up and drop off his writing.
A 'New Social Compact'
Whatever approaches individual schools take the University-wide commitment to tenure and its need for new blood are bound to create tension.
"We need to examine the life-cycle of the faculty," Fineberg says. "We are in need of a new social compact between the University and the faculty and redefinition of what that means."