Until the beginning of 1994, federal law permitted mandatory retirement of tenured faculty at age 70. The Committee on Mandatory Retirement in Higher Education, formed by the National Research Council, was charged by Congress to examine potential effects on colleges, universities, and faculty members of ending the exemption for tenured faculty…

Following the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the increased regulatory burden placed on defined benefit pension plans, the less complex fully funded defined contribution plan emerged as a more attractive and increasingly popular alternative. Traditionally the standard approach to pensions in the educational…