"[Research professorships] enabled us to retain some people. Professors who felt a duty to create turnover, some of those individuals felt they needed to make way, but feared that they might be committing professional suicide," Fox says.
Some Faculty members say that they haven't felt any pressure from the University to step aside.
"I haven't felt any pressure [to retire]," says Mansfield, who is now 67. "Personally I don't have any plans, and I'm going year by year to see how things go."
While Mansfield feels that the mandatory retirement law should never have been repealed, he also feels that the retirement age was too low, failing to reflect the productivity of older people.
Slow Turnover
According to Thompson there is a generation of women and minorities--the two groups most underrepresented amongst the Faculty--waiting in the wings to take over for their older colleagues.
"Given that we have so few resignations, our slot openings are from retirement," she says. "Most of the people of retirement age are white males."
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