The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to address today's claimants and focus on the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns and more dispersed constituencies. In the private sector, rules and regulations seek to tame corner-cutting and short-sighted behavior. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the…

Information concerning early retirement in colleges and universities was obtained through a faculty survey, prediction of rates of retirement and costs under three plans, computer simulations of faculty turnover rates, and faculty/administrator opinions and data pertaining to the implications of specific plans. In 1980, 647 faculty 45 years old…