| Philomena Dunkl
University of Virginia
Factors influencing inidividual faculty retirement decisions
FINAL REPORT:
As of January 1, 1994, tenured faculty in higher education were no longer exempt from the provisions of the 1986 Amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) which eliminated mandatory retirement on the basis of age. The legislation changed the nature of the social contract between the faculty member and the institution because, prior to the passage of the Amendment, conferral of tenure had carried an understanding that tenure terminated with a predetermined retirement age. The "uncapping" of mandatory retirement gives tenured faculty the prerogative to select an age of retirement that is individually determined rather than institutionally mandated. The study investigated the influence of selected factors on individual faculty retirement intentions and decisions. The study focused on financial factors, and factors within the work context which tend to hold the faculty member in the workplace and delay retirement, and those which tend to push a faculty member out of the workplace and induce earlier retirement.
Data from the 1992-1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF-93) were used to examine the relationships between the selected hold, push, and financial factors and faculty retirement intentions. The study was limited to full-time, instructional tenured faculty at four-year institutions who were 55 or older in 1993.
The findings suggest that factors within the work context influence retirement intentions and ultimately the decision to retire. Faculty who remain actively engaged in research and other creative endeavors, who spend less time on teaching activities and thus have more time for research endeavors, and who continue to receive funding and publish intend to delay retirement. Job satisfaction also holds a faculty member in the workplace. Faculty who are rewarded for their contributions with higher salaries and higher academic rank also have expectations of postponed retirement. A heavy teaching workload component, characterized by more time devoted to teaching-related activities and more time spent in the classroom teaching large numbers of students, tends to push faculty toward earlier expected ages of retirement.
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