It pays to go to Harvard, but sometimes it can pay even more to leave.

Hilton A. Salhanick, Hisaw professor of reproductive physiology at the School of Public Health (SPH), was paid $250,000 in 1996 as an incentive to take emeritus status, according to University tax returns. He was 71.

The bonus is a University record for a lump-sum payment and was the result of negotiations between Salhanick and then-SPH dean Harvey V. Fineberg '67, who is now the provost.

And though faculty praise Salhanick's abilities, the use of such a large incentive caused concern among many who object both to the idea of paying a professor to retire and to the subjectivity involved in calculating such a bonus without a clearly stated policy or methodology.

It has also raised questions of how the University should deal with the 1994 end of mandatory retirement, which allows a tenured faculty member to stay on the faculty as long as he or she wishes--an attractive option, say those who object to how some schools within the University treat their senior and emeriti faculty.

"Somehow it seems morally wrong to pay someone for retiring," says Marvin Zelen, professor of statistical studies in the faculty of public health.

"It's like you're buying something at a premium," he adds.

Zelen was joined by other faculty who--shocked that any professor was given a bonus of that size--found the very idea of retirement incentives distasteful.

"My initial reaction is that it's a terrible idea [to pay somebody to leave]," says James P. Butler, lecturer in physiology in the faculty of public health. "If I am to leave at age 67 or 68, I would much rather leave because someone told me the truth, that [my] research is not as good as it used to be. That would be straight and honest."

"[A bonus] seems sort of an under-handed way to do it," he says.

What's more, Salhanick said the incentive, and moreover the way the negotiations were carried out, did not make for an easy transition to emeritus status.

Like professors at other schools with incentive plans, Salhanick was paid in cash, meaning he lost 39 percent to taxes. In addition, Salhanick says he received no raise the year before he retired, and he worked several months without pay in 1996, tying up loose ends.

Salhanick's 1995 salary was roughly $85,000, according to University tax returns.

Though SPH officials would not reveal the average salary for a chaired professor, tenured faculty and SPH administrators estimated that the average is more than $100,000.

A Departmental Shift