Community Colleges Hope to Keep Aging Professors in the Classroom

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By EUGENE MCCORMACK

Roy Flores, chancellor of Pima Community College, in Arizona, had been aware for several years that the average age of faculty members at his institution was rising. But it was not until he ran the numbers last fall that he learned just how old they were.

By last month, 54.7 percent of the college's nearly 380 full-time faculty members were expected to be eligible to retire under the state's retirement plan. By May 2010, that proportion is expected to jump to 67.2 percent. And because some professors have gained additional years on the job elsewhere in the state system, Mr. Flores adds, those figures may well be too low.

"The actual number of people eligible is much, much higher," he says.

So many faculty members at community colleges are near retirement largely because many of the colleges were created and did the bulk of their hiring between 1965 and 1975, when the first group of baby boomers was entering the work force. Community colleges have a higher percentage of faculty members between the ages of 45 and 64 — 66.1 percent — than does any other type of higher-education institution, according to the U.S. Education Department's most recent figures, from 2003.

This faculty age profile is a double-edged sword for two-year colleges, many of which are experiencing rapid enrollment growth and expect more growth in the future, unlike some of their four-year brethren. Already more than 43 percent of the nation's undergraduates are at two-year institutions.

In some disciplines, community-college administrators would be happy to see turnover that would increase the number of cheaper, younger faculty members. But in other, more career-oriented specialties, early retirements could worsen existing faculty shortages.

As a result, as well as because community colleges are focused on populating the leadership pipeline, fewer of them are encouraging retirement than is the case among four-year institutions.

At Pima, the community-college district is preparing for faculty retirements on its six campuses by stepping up recruitment efforts. In January, for the first time, the college sent letters to 20 research universities asking them to allow representatives from Pima to speak to their graduate students about the benefits of working in Tucson. Since then Pima has sent speakers to four of those universities. College officials say that it is too early to tell how many hires will be made as a result of the visits, but that they are encouraged by the students' responses.

The college has also formed an agreement with the University of Arizona that will allow graduate students there to work as adjuncts at Pima. The two-year college was already interested in increasing faculty recruiting, says Mr. Flores, "but there is definitely a greater urgency in our efforts now because of the numbers."

Job Opportunities

Numbers are what persuaded M. Jane Harper, vice president for teaching and learning on Tarrant County College's Northeast campus, in Texas, to join a panel at the Modern Language Association's annual convention, in December, about job openings at community colleges.

By 2010, she says, 18.8 percent of the faculty members at Texas community colleges are expected to have retired. By 2015 that proportion will have jumped to 43.1 percent.

She sees those figures as an opportunity for young academics more than as a reason for distress, and does not expect that her own institution will have difficulty filling positions, particularly because of its location in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and its competitive salaries.

"I had a vice chancellor who always said, 'Don't worry if someone leaves. There are 100 people waiting in line to get that very job.' The line might be a little shorter now, but it's still there," she says.

That seems to be a popular viewpoint at community colleges. Many academic officers say they have not noticed a marked increase in faculty retirements over the past year and are confident that they can fill positions that do open up.

"I wouldn't say that retirements are a problem for us," says Michael Summers, vice president for academic affairs at Tidewater Community College, in Virginia. "We expect the numbers to go up slightly in the next few years, but our numbers have stayed pretty steady."

Few national data indicate whether community-college faculty members are retiring later than in years past. But Wayne Boekes, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Bismarck State College, in North Dakota, believes that is so at his institution. "There is no question," he says, "that the poor economy and fears about money are keeping people on longer."

Sweetening the Pot

Faculty members might want to stick around, but a few institutions are making efforts to help them out the door.

Nassau Community College, in New York, has for years offered professors who are exactly 57 years old and have been employed by the college for 10 or more years a one-time bonus equaling 90 percent of their salaries if they agree to retire.

John C. Ostling, vice president for academic affairs, estimates that about one-fifth of Nassau's eligible faculty members take the college up on that incentive each year.

In the academic year that just ended, however, Nassau devised a wider-reaching enticement, in order to encourage more retirements. An additional 30-percent bonus was offered to any faculty member employed for more than 20 years who agreed to leave. "It produced 50 retirements, which was 20 more than we were expecting," says Mr. Ostling.

The goals of the additional bonus were to free up money — faculty members at Nassau are among the highest-paid community-college faculty members in the country, with an average salary of $94,055 for full professors in the 2004-5 academic year — and to bring in people with fresh ideas who have recent experience working in business and industry.

Although bonuses are an effective way to create job openings, Mr. Ost-ling says, "sometimes you are losing really valuable faculty that way. From my point of view, turnover isn't automatically a good thing."

That view is shared by Christopher Picard, vice president for academic affairs at the College of Du Page, in Illinois. Retirement incentives there, as at most institutions, have to be structured as across-the-board policies and cannot be set up discipline by discipline. As a result, the incentives have caused shortages in some programs.

"We have had retirements in critical areas, like nursing," says Mr. Picard, "and many of our critical career and tech-ed programs where replacing those faculty is going to be a real challenge."