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The Not-So-Retired Scientist

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By Mary Beckman

As an 85-year-old emeritus professor, Bruce Stocker is just old enough to get parodied by the graduate students in his Stanford University department as a ghost, pushing a squeaky cart laden with flasks and beakers through deserted halls. But a ghost doesn't publish papers or receive licensing fees, as he does. Forced to officially retire when he was 70 because of mandatory-retirement laws, the octogenarian microbiologist has yet to give up his microscope.

Now that the mandatory-retirement rules are history in academe, science professors are faced with career prospects not unlike movie stars: As long as they can keep the money flowing, they can keep doing what they love most -- in the scientist's case, experiments. Those who retire but want to continue their research have to make do with fewer resources -- such as lab space and cheap labor in the form of graduate students -- than their tenured colleagues, but they are free from the administrative duties that dog full-time faculty members.

The Pastoral Effect

According to a report by the National Education Association, about 18 percent of faculty members in the sciences and engineering at four-year universities were at least 60 years old as of 1999. Most of these older faculty members were planning to retire within three years, but about a quarter said they had no intention of stepping down any time soon.

With the end of mandatory retirement in 1994, some critics had predicted dire consequences for research universities: The tenure track would be clogged by professors over 70 whose high salaries would tap too much of the salary pool. So far, that scenario has yet to occur. About 44 percent of universities in a recent survey reported having professors stay on past 70, says Ronald Ehrenberg, a professor of economics and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. He conducted a survey of faculty-retirement policies at 608 institutions, including 123 doctoral-granting universities, for the American Association of University Professors.

At Cornell, Ehrenberg says, he has found that faculty members are retiring about three years later than they used to; so, for example, instead of departing at 65, a faculty member might work until 68. To counter that increase, many institutions have come up with a variety of ways to encourage professors to retire, or have found compromises that allow older researchers to stay on in some part-time capacity while freeing up resources for the next generation.

The approach seems to be working at some colleges. To understand the issue at her institution, Lorraine Dorfman, a professor of social work at the University of Iowa, conducted a study of 71 current and retired professors on the campus between the ages of 70 and 74. "People who stayed on beyond 70 did not report having any pressure to retire," she says. "They had no feeling of being put out to pasture."

Stocker, the Stanford microbiologist, works on a salmonella vaccine for cows and can possibly relate to pastures. Even though he was forced by law at the time to retire, he says his department was still supportive: "They were quite happy to let me continue to work."

Phased Transition

Perhaps the most common way that universities negotiate how long older faculty members stay on is to offer financial incentives and a gradual-retirement schedule. For example, Ehrenberg found that 50 percent of private doctoral-granting universities and a third of public ones have created phased-retirement programs, where the professor must relinquish his or her tenure, work part time, and retire within a specified number of years. A small percentage of these universities -- 16.5 percent -- have plans that allow professors to work part time for as many years as they want.

Ehrenberg and Dorfman agree that concerns about paying for health insurance could put off retirement for some individuals. Of the colleges Ehrenberg polled, 80 percent continued to offer health coverage for professors in the phased-retirement programs, but only 58 percent of the institutions paid for it.

Institutions that allow researchers to gradually retire or continue to work part time provide some support and benefits to these faculty members. Typically, they might receive office space, computers, and telephones. Only a third of the institutions that Ehrenberg surveyed allowed professors emeriti to retain their full laboratory space. Even fewer offered financial support for professors to travel for their research.

Even with its constraints, working part time has suited Stocker very well, and he recommends that scientists cut back on their activities slowly. "I would advise people not to stop completely or suddenly. I gradually graded my lab down to just myself. If I want anything done, I have to do it myself."

Dorfman says maintaining research grants is key for those scientists who want to continue to work well into their senior years. "If they have grant support, and they're paying for [the resources], they can have whatever they want. But once they lose their funding, it's not so rosy."

Going and Staying

Bahram Bahrami, a professor of economics at North Dakota State University in Fargo, conducted a national study of 558 faculty members 50 and older to examine factors that affected their retirement decisions. He found that the majority of faculty members retire at 65; that's consistent with Ehrenberg's finding that more than two-thirds of faculty members at 60 are considering retiring within half a decade.

Aside from financial or insurance considerations, the senior faculty members who decide to keep working are the ones who identify most strongly with the idea of being a scientist, says Dorfman. "They really see science as a hobby. Their work is their play." Others, however, "retire to work," she says. "Some academic researchers officially retire while they still have grants. Then they don't have to teach or have administrative duties."

Bahrami says that only a small percentage of faculty members never completely retire -- Stocker and his counterparts represent about 7 percent of faculty of retirement age.

And Keep Going and Going

A new trend among academic scientists reaching retirement age is to retire from university duties and then set up shop on a bench in a colleague's laboratory, providing what is essentially a free postdoc for the colleague, according to 53-year-old Bill Wood, a professor of developmental biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In a few years, he plans on shutting down his lab and moving to his colleague's laboratory across the hall. And he's looking forward to the possibility of working at the bench again, after decades of managing other scientists.

Stocker tries to keep connected to people in his department. He goes into lab for about 30 hours a week these days, which he pays for through licensing fees of a vaccine he developed. He uses space in a colleague's laboratory, but misses working with graduate students. "That was always very enjoyable. And working together made the research go a lot faster," he says. He interacts with members in his adoptive lab, where he participates in lab meetings.

Stocker may never surrender his pipetter. Asked when he'll unofficially retire, he responds, "Whenever I'm compelled to. Either I'll drop dead or become incapacitated by old age." At which point, a pasture won't do him any good.