The Graying of theFaculty

Once upon a time, being a tenured professor at Harvard meant being set for life. An established Faculty member could count on a long career of teaching and research at the nation's pre-eminent institution and a salary that led the pack.

Upon hitting the age of 66, most professors were secure enough to retire to their homes--many of which were located in affluent Cambridge neighborhoods--living comfortably off their Harvard pensions.

The world is now very different.

Harvard is no longer the only choice employer on the block. Well-known professors frequently have their pick of competitive offers from multiple universities, many of which have adopted a "star" system which uses high non-scale salaries to lure superb faculty. And Harvard must compete.

Add to that a steadily rising life expectancy, higher living costs and nowadays few professors are retiring at 66--comfortably or otherwise.

In the 1980s, anti-discrimination laws began to force corporations and businesses to do away with their mandatory retirement ages. Universities, Harvard prominent among them, lobbied hard to successfully obtain an exception to the law.

But the exemption to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act enjoyed by colleges and universities ran out at the end of 1993. No longer able to politely inform professors they were expected to retire by age 70, tenure now truly meant a job for life.

The University was afraid. Would its oldest Faculty continue to retire and relinquish the tenure seats they held across the University? If not, how would the University go about freeing up space for a new generation of scholars and to advance new areas of study?

"There was a lot of nervousness when the law changed," says Carol J. Thompson, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) for Academic Affairs. "[We thought], 'Oh goodness, Faculty aren't going to retire if they don't have to.'"

"[But] it really hasn't happened," she says.

The Numbers

Administrators say the number of professors affected by the change in the law is quite small. Many Faculty members appreciate their decreasing productivity as they approach 70 and choose to step down even without a University requirement.

But still the retirement issue was one of few concerns raised in Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles' otherwise upbeat annual letter to the Faculty.

According to the letter, only 66 Faculty members have reached age 70 since 1993. But of that number, 43--or 65 percent--have retired.

Knowles says he's not yet concerned.

"Since many of our colleagues who have not yet retired have indicated their retirement plans, I am not yet especially concerned about 'renewal,' or about the continued vibrancy of the Faculty as a whole," Knowles wrote in the letter.

While University administrators acknowledge the small number of Faculty affected, they also admit that the presence of only one older professor who can't quite pull their weight creates the appearance of a larger problem.****

"It's in the nature of getting old that you don't realize that you're getting old," says Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53. "When you add the condition of senility, this is all the more the case."

Yet, administrators and Faculty members both say the issue is complicated by the fact that older professors are frequently the most distinguished in their fields.

"You have professors who are very much the established leaders in their field, and who are still available to serve as mentors and teachers, as advisors to the generations of students and scholars coming up after them," says Assistant Dean of FAS for Academic Planning Elizabeth Doherty.

That means the oldest members of the Faculty can often contribute significantly to their departments--even as the natural slow-down of age sets in, some Faculty members say.

"It's very much like in a family. The older people have something to contribute, and the younger people have something to contribute," says Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences J. Woodland Hastings.

All I Want Is A Carrel

Some departments have been affected disproportionately by the lifting of the mandatory retirement age.

Just 6 percent of professors in the humanities who have reached the age of 70 since 1993 remain on active service to the Faculty. More than 58 percent of professors in the same category in the natural sciences continue to teach.

In part this is due to differences in their work and their research, say University officials.

For humanists, says Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr. '59, "research and teaching are often felt to be in opposition to each other."

Time spent teaching is time spent away from libraries doing further study.

"[In the humanities] it's perfectly respectable to retire," Fox says.

It's a different story in the natural sciences where student involvement and professors' laboratories are closely wedded. For them, retirement has long been equated with the end of their research-- a lifetime of work some professors are unwilling to relinquish.

"Professors in the sciences are often dependent on having substantial lab space and funding, and that's less the case in the humanities. In the humanities it may be that one desperately needs the carrel in the library," Hastings says.

A Change in Name Only

Two years ago, the University created the position of research professor to grease the wheels of Faculty turnover.

In every meaningful way it is the same thing as a professor emeritus, Fox and Thompson say. Just like professors emeriti, research professors do not receive salaries, teach classes, retain a vote in Faculty meetings or have departmental responsibilities. But both titles allow professors office space and continued access to the Harvard library system, among other perks.

But the "active" sound of the title has convinced many Faculty members to take the new option.

According to Fox, about 80 percent of the Faculty who have retired since the new title has been offered have chosen the research professor moniker, while 20 percent have chosen to become professor emeritus.

While administrators and Faculty say that the professor emeritus title once had a certain status to it, it has since become synonymous--especially to grant-giving organizations--with inactive academics resting on their laurels. For those seeking to continue research after giving up teaching, the continued flow of grant money is the only way to sustain academic life.

For such Faculty members, the active sound of the title "research professor" convinces many that grant committees won't just toss their proposals aside.

"[Faculty] perception is that it would be easier to get grants. And perceptions count," Thompson says.

Fox says many Faculty members simply feel research professor is a more accurate description of their activities.

"They prefer a title with a more active sound to it," he says. "They think it more reflects what retirement will be for them."

"I would certainly be more comfortable with that sort of title," says Owen J. Gingerich, professor of astronomy and the history of science.

For Levin Research Professor of Literature Donald L. Fanger, the appeal was also in the name.

"I mainly took the research professor title because I liked the sound of it better than I like the sound of emeritus...and because I had a number of projects on which I was now free to work full time." he says. "Since I was going to continue to be active as a scholar, I welcomed a title which suggested that specifically in the way that emeritus does not."

Fanger says his teaching has only improved over the years, and his department would have supported him had he chosen to continue teaching.

"I don't have any reason to think that the quality of my teaching had dropped, probably quite to the contrary," says Fanger, author of Dostoyevsky and Romantic Realism.

Instead, Fanger says he wanted to pursue a research professorship that would allow him to write more before he "lost [his] marbles," he quipped.

Some administrators feel that the research professor title has allowed the University to meet two goals at once--freeing up scant tenured slots while keeping more professors in the Harvard system.

"[Research professorships] enabled us to retain some people. Professors who felt a duty to create turnover, some of those individuals felt they needed to make way, but feared that they might be committing professional suicide," Fox says.

Some Faculty members say that they haven't felt any pressure from the University to step aside.

"I haven't felt any pressure [to retire]," says Mansfield, who is now 67. "Personally I don't have any plans, and I'm going year by year to see how things go."

While Mansfield feels that the mandatory retirement law should never have been repealed, he also feels that the retirement age was too low, failing to reflect the productivity of older people.

Slow Turnover

But with the same professors holding coveted tenured spots year after year, the University has been increasingly hard-pressed to create turnover.

According to Thompson there is a generation of women and minorities--the two groups most underrepresented amongst the Faculty--waiting in the wings to take over for their older colleagues.

"Given that we have so few resignations, our slot openings are from retirement," she says. "Most of the people of retirement age are white males."

Thompson says the proportion of members of underrepresented minority groups would likely rise if some of these Faculty members were to retire.

In his letter to the Faculty, Knowles also links the lack of turnover to an overall rise in the proportion of tenured Faculty members to their non-tenured colleagues.

Still, Knowles says the slow turnover has not yet had an appreciable effect.

"I don't think that the number of professors over 70 is large enough to frustrate their younger colleagues, any more than a 50- or a 60-year old colleague can," he wrote in an e-mail message. "And in most departments there are empty Faculty positions, so junior Faculty promotion is not blocked."

Harder Issues

More difficult is the fact that in the absence of a mandatory retirement age, the University has little recourse to remove those professors who are no longer able to pull their weight.

"It's true that we don't have recourse in the sense that people can't be forced out," says Thompson. "[But] we've talked to departments, and encouraged them to make sure that every Faculty member is equally sharing the load."

In extreme cases, the administration does have ways to indicate to professors that their time of greatest usefulness has passed.

At times, Thompson says, "the dean has been known to give no salary increase," which is supposed to be interpreted as a direct warning from the University.

And then there's the direct approach, she says.

"John Fox has talked to a number of people and been reasonably direct about their participation, sort of 'Either get busy or get out,' type of conversation," Thompson says.

Fox says working with Faculty on this issue is necessarily a sensitive business.

"It may be that in some of these cases, this is the first major career decision they've made since they got tenure," Fox says.

Helping current Harvard Faculty become former Harvard faculty is a delicate job, Thompson says, and administrators must "make sure Faculty aren't retreating into the woodwork."