This background paper summarizes the design of a faculty early retirement plan at Stanford University. Summary and recommendations indicate: (1) Budgetary stringencies at Stanford require that the faculty size remain essentially fixed. In view of this situation, a properly designed early retirement program should be adopted as a means of…

At Stanford University, The early retirement plan is an option for older faculty who, while continuing for the most part to serve their institutions well, nonetheless recognize a difficulty in competing with younger faculty who are attuned to today's approaches. (Author/PG)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how certain personnel practices influence the ability of a university to achieve and maintain a desirable faculty rank distribution and new appointment rate when the faculty size is fixed. A mathematical model is formulated that relates faculty size, promotion rates, and tenure and nontenure lifetimes to…