Mandatory retirement

"I'm in no way ready to retire - it's ridiculous. I'm still doing research, seeing students and teaching classes, and all of a sudden, for some arbitrary reason, they're just going to cut it off?. I think I'm just coming into what I really can do, after all these years of study." . Mathematics professor Dr. Peter Antonelli, two years from retirement and attempting to prove mathematically one of two major theories of evolution.

Sixty-five just ain't what it used to be.

Many "seniors" today are only getting warmed up at that age. They've reached the zenith of their careers and are now ready to really get down to business. In fact, a Statistics Canada study released in late February says that, in 2001, 18 per cent of working seniors were older than 75.

Last December Prime Minister Paul Martin hinted he'd like to scrap mandatory retirement, and Ontario is considering outlawing the policy as early as next spring. "It's in the air," says Gordon Swaters, president of the U of A's academic staff association. Sooner or later, it seems, the university will have no choice but to revisit its controversial policy of retiring staff at 65.

"There is a general feeling within academic staff associations throughout the country that it's just a matter of time before mandatory retirement is toppled by the courts, and that, rather than being thrown into a state of uncertainty, we should take proactive measures to manage the inevitable transition," says Swaters.

To that end, AAS:UA will be surveying its membership on the issue, and on the question of supplementary pension plans, within the next month. Swaters is quick to point out, however, that his association doesn't have a position on the policy one way or the other. But he's eager to find out what the membership has to say.

"At least historically, we're split," he says. There are those who feel the policy ensures faculty renewal, allowing for a regular, healthy infusion of new blood into the institution. It also saves a lot of money, since expensive senior professors at the top of the salary scale are replaced by their cheaper, tenure-track counterparts or by sessional instructors.

"On the other side of the coin, there is a sizable group of our membership that sees mandatory retirement as being at least unfair if not outright discrimination on the basis of age," says Swaters. "These competing views are what we need to understand as an institution."

The policy has been challenged once before, by Dr. Olive Dickason, a professor of history who argued that forcing her to retire violated Alberta's Individual's Rights Protection Act. That case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ended up supporting the U of A, finding in 1992 that "it was the total package and trade-offs found in the collective agreement that made the subject rule reasonable and justifiable." This despite the fact Alberta has no mandatory retirement legislation.

What makes the issue so urgent now is that almost one-third of our professors are past the age of 55, and so due to retire within 10 years. Meanwhile the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is forecasting a serious shortage of qualified PhDs for faculty positions in the near future.

"Given the present demography, we really can't afford to be retiring people who are still productive and capable of doing the job," says Dr. Janet Fast, a human ecology professor who does research on the costs of aging.

"I was at a research round-table sponsored by the Policy Research Initiative and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council a few weeks ago, and the whole theme was how do we keep people in the labour force longer, and here we are kicking them out when they don't want to go. It seems a little illogical."

English professor Dr. Juliet McMaster, who retired three years early, supports mandatory retirement in principle but feels it needs to be more flexible. She suggests a post-retirement application process, whereby only the best professors would make the cut.

"People of my generation signed a contract, and we expected to be done at 65.It's much less stressful if you know, come 65, it's retirement time. But from the point of view of the institution, it's really a pity to lose out on someone who is really good and wants to stay on, and I think there should be some flexibility there.

"You don't want to lose your Northrop Fryes (a famous Canadian literary critic) if the Northrop Fryes are ready to hang in there, but on the other hand you really do want to get rid of your dead wood. I do think the students need more people coming through the ranks - that's the healthiest.a steady stream from the bottom and a steady retirement at the top."

In the world of science, ecologist Dr. David Schindler is one of those Northrop Fryes. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada with 10 honorary degrees and a seemingly endless list of international and national awards. Losing him have an enormous impact on the university. He is now 65 but hardly winding down. The only solution for him, he says, may be to jump ship.

"I'm not looking forward to retirement, and I worry that we're losing some of our best scientists and people in other professions, the best faculty in Canada, with these silly, rigid rules," he said.

"I don't like the idea of just releasing it and saying, 'Let's keep everyone on,' but there are compromises that can be made. To me it's sort of like a driver's license - if you look around, you'll see some people at 65 who are better drivers than 95 per cent of people on the road and others who simply should not be on the road.

"So I think a reasonable thing would be to look at the annual reviews of people, and if they show signs of dropping to below average or even somewhat better than average, they're served notice."

Schindler says he has had repeated offers from universities in California and the eastern U.S. to replace people who are retiring there at 75. The money is in American dollars, and terms amount to "name what you'd like to have," he says. Add to that the fact that his wife, Dr. Suzanne Bayley, is at 63 nowhere near ready to retire and offers from elsewhere become tough to resist.

But in his case Alberta has something many American locations don't: accessibility to abundant natural ecosystems. "I'll have good natural systems to work on for the rest of my career, even if I hold on for a while."

Some professors emeriti do continue to teach past 65 on sessional contracts. Others take on special projects or administrative duties. But such concessions are a far cry from a fully engaged, full-time research and teaching post with all of its stimulation and challenges.

"I can see both sides of it," says Graduate Students' Association President Lee Skallerup. "Having worked in university administration, there's something to be said for faculty renewal, for getting new blood into the system. And there's something to say for the economics. Let's face it, first-year tenure track position is cheaper than a full professor who's been here for 20 or 25 years.

"On the flip side of that, somebody who has been standing in front of the classroom for 20 or 25 years and has been carefully considering the material for that long certainly has so much wisdom and experience to offer student that an incoming, tenure-track professor just won't have."

It's a particularly tenacious misconception that younger faculty necessarily have fresher ideas than senior profs, adds Skallerup. And many of them are attracted to a department in the first place because of its strength in senior ranks.

Dr. Cheryl Zusack, a new faculty member in the English Department, agrees. "As to whether or not senior faculty represent 'dead wood' in a department, I find this assumption rather odd given that in other professions the longer a person works in a field the more highly valued he or she becomes because of the accumulation of professional experience, expertise, and accomplishment."

For some, the elimination of dead wood is a red herring in the mandatory retirement debate anyway. They point out that the U of A has one of the most rigorous faculty evaluation processes in the country, so that weaker faculty should be singled out long before they hit retirement. "We have a system in place that supposed to ensure that every faculty member is doing their job," says Fast.

As people ponder what is sure to be a lively debate on mandatory retirement in the coming months, Swaters would like his members to know there are costs and sacrifices on both sides. Abolishing it "could have an impact on the rate of replenishing faculty," he says, and may end up costing the university more. But for those who fear an institution populated by dinosaurs well past their prime, consider the University of Calgary example, says Swaters, where there is no mandatory retirement and people leave voluntarily.

"Roughly speaking in Calgary, the average professor would work two years longer than here," he says. "So that should alleviate the anxiety of some people that we're going to have a lot of old codgers hanging on by their finger tips to their offices."