ERIC Number: EJ970044
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0190-2946
EISSN: N/A
The Merits of Emeriti
Fishman, Seth Matthew
Academe, v98 n3 May-Jun 2012
The silver tide of faculty retirement continues to ebb and flow. While much of today's scholarship on faculty retirement focuses on the financial implications for colleges and universities, arguing that older faculty members clog up the faculty pipeline, cost more in salary and benefits, and are ineffective teachers who fear technology, little research addresses the retired faculty member's experience. In late 2009, during the height of the financial recession, the author interviewed fourteen emeritus faculty members (four women and ten men) who had been retired for two to five years. He asked the emeriti about their overall retirement experience: the decisions they made, their level of satisfaction in retirement, their level of involvement with their former institution, how they felt about their retirement perquisites, what they missed about being a professor, and what retirement advice they would give current faculty members. As several of the author's survey participants mentioned, retired faculty members are an untapped resource. While some relocate or pursue new endeavors during retirement, others remain close to campus and want to stay connected to their former institutions, particularly at the department level. It is a connection that offers advantages to both the emeriti and the university.
Descriptors: Retirement, College Faculty, Teacher Retirement, Interviews, Phenomenology, Profiles, Retirement Benefits, Work Attitudes
American Association of University Professors. 1012 Fourteenth Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005. Tel: 800-424-2973; Tel: 202-737-5900; Fax: 202-737-5526; e-mail: academe@aaup.org; Web site: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A