March 26, 2008
Out With the Old, In With the New
According to an article in the The Providence Journal, administrators at the University of Rhode Island hope that upping an early-retirement bonus from $7,000 to $20,000 will save the institution money by enticing some high-paid professors to step down early. The reporter, Jennifer D. Jordan, writes:
URI President Robert L. Carothers asked the Board of Governors for Higher Education to support the one-time offer, which extends to roughly one-third of URI’s 655 full-time faculty who are over age 58 and have worked at the university for 15 years or more. Staff who meet the same age and length of service requirements are also eligible. The university does not have a mandatory retirement age. About 235 professors are age 59 or older; of those, 107 are 65 or older.
University officials said that about 25 professors and staff who retired last year received the $7,000 bonus. They estimate that twice that many may take advantage of the larger bonus this spring. Eligible faculty and staff have until mid-April to decide. …
“We talked to people and found the $7,000 wasn’t enough,” Carothers told the board. “We didn’t want to go up to a 40-percent payment, since that would be about $40,000. So we decided on the $20,000 figure.”
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Wednesday March 26, 2008 | PermalinkAt an average $100,000 salary plus $40,000 a year in benefits for veteran faculty, URI would save about $120,000 next year for every professor who retires early, said the university’s new provost, Donald H. DeHayes. If 50 professors were to retire early, URI would save $6 million, less what it would spend to replace the veteran faculty with lecturers or new professors. New faculty earn $50,000 to $70,000 a year, depending on their discipline, plus benefits. Part-time lecturers earn $3,200 per course, no benefits, and are limited to two courses per semester.
Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Other Duties as Assigned
Next: Tenure: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
This is ,in essence,old age discrimination via the back door.Work hard all of your life and you will be rewarded by being pushed out the door because of your salary is too high? Not once did the question of quality of education become an issue.It was about money.In Dallas,they push out the old at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas so they can pay the new person less and the upper management make more.The president now makes $1.1 million a year.He received a 10% salary increase while the rest of us got a big 2% increase and an insurance benefit increase cost.More administrators are making more than private industry company presidents now….look how far we’ve come!
— Brent Mar 26, 09:06 PM #
Let me make a prediction that these faculty will not be replaced by other tenurable faculty, enabling the continued downsizing and devaluation of the profession. By the way, $7000 is plainly insulting as these faculty, who have no doubt served the University well for so many years, could make much more than that by continuing to work. Now, I wonder if they will encourage administrators to do the same. I wonder…
— ExiledCreole Mar 27, 09:47 AM #
How is this discrimination if it’s voluntary?
— Chuck Mar 27, 01:30 PM #
Experienced professionals with long resumes and publications to their credit might need to rethink their career trajectories. This has already happened in the private sector. Once people can get over being let go, they’ll realize how much they can contribute in other fields such as non-profits. My advice: the ivory tower model is being challenged by global forces, so stay active in your community and expand your professional network.
— R Mar 28, 11:31 AM #
These early-retirement programs serve several functions.
First of all, forget not that, when mandatory retirement was abolished in this nation as age discriminatory about two decades ago, there was actually an exception for a few years permitting the forced retirement of college faculty. (Interesting, isn’t it?)
These early retirement incentive programs serve adminstrations well. They permit the “constructive discharge” of faculty whom they dislike and encourage the defection of faculty who dislike them, and much more power is given to the administration (rather than the faculty) to re-shape the institution.
All without having to use that horrid word: “retrenchment” (which is often constricted by legal contracts as well as AAUP principles).
The link to the main article in the posting above makes most of that clear (the “re-design” function of early retirement programs).
What is not mentioned, but what is often a part of these programs, is the famous “double-dip”: the tenured faculty member retires early (or just plain retires), releasing the full-time position to administrative control — and in return is permitted to continue as an adjunct (in some cases at a slightly higher rate than the usually exploitative contingent laborer’s salary).
Ah, yes, gone is the lifetime commitment of the faculty to each other and, thereby, to the university. We live in the age of tenured faculty “independent contractors” — and administrations thereby emboldened to expand their own autocratic powers.
— Anti-hypocrisy Advocate Mar 29, 10:38 AM #