In this research, we explore responsible investing in Canadian Universities. Interviews were conducted with 31 universities that were identified as having endowments or pension portfolios greater than $50M. We also reviewed publicly available data for these institutions. Universities reported facing numerous barriers but perhaps most noteworthy…

When the Carnegie Foundation was established in 1905, universities in Canada and Newfoundland were eligible for grants, on strict conditions that were seen by some as "colonial," "continentalist," or "imperial" intrusions on autonomy; for example, a Carnegie plan to create a federation of Maritime universities. This…

Teachers and other employees of the School District of Philadelphia receive their retirement benefits from the Pennsylvania state retirement plan for schools, which includes both a defined-benefit pension plan and a modest retiree health benefit. The cost of the former is expected to rise quite substantially and, as this technical analysis will…

Public school teachers deserve a compensation system that puts them on a secure path toward retirement. The severely backloaded structure of today's public school teacher pension systems benefit only a small proportion of entering teachers while putting the rest on an insecure retirement path. But there is a cost-neutral solution to this problem…

This article argues the importance of teaching students about the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of Australia's superannuation system as an example of a real-world problem context. It also provides a rationale for teaching financial modelling and decision-making in ways that respect the diverse financial realities represented in…

When policy advocates debate how best to ensure equity in public education funding, the topic of teacher pension reform rarely comes up. But, in fact, pensions represent a very large and fast-growing source of education spending, much of it distributed in ways that are, in a number of states, anything but equitable. When states subsidize teacher…

Over half a century after pay discrimination became illegal in the United States, a persistent pay gap between men and women continues to hurt our nation's workers and our national economy. Women working full time in the U.S. are paid 82 cents to every dollar earned by men -- but it doesn't stop there. The consequences?of this gap?affect?women…

The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) was founded in 1975, when it replaced an outdated set of pension arrangements for university staff. The USS was stable for nearly four decades but, in recent years, it has undergone considerable turbulence. The causes include tighter pension regulations, growing life expectancy and lower financial…

This paper assesses the extent to which education affects how Canadians save and accumulate wealth for retirement. The paper makes three contributions. First, a descriptive analysis is presented of differences in savings and home values across individuals based on their levels of educational attainment. To this end, new datasets that link survey…

At first glance, the recent teacher-retirement reforms in Ohio seem to bring good fiscal news to school systems in the Buckeye State. With Senate Bills 341 and 342--and a series of cutbacks on retiree healthcare--the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is projected to spend less on retirement costs in 2020 than it does today. But these reforms…

This article explores how Dr. Emil Altman and the New York City Board of Education manipulated prevailing narratives of disability in a crusade to rid their city school system of "unfit" teachers during the late 1920s through to the early 1940s. Capitalising on fears of disability related to ideas about efficiency and eugenics, Altman…

Pensions have been at the forefront of recent debates over teacher pay, but the issues are complicated and political. As such, this document is an attempt to inform readers about how pension plans work for the 90 percent of public school teachers enrolled in them. Using objective data and analysis, we explain how teachers earn benefits in those…

I use a detailed panel of data and a unique modeling specification to explore how public schoolteachers respond to the incentives embedded in North Carolina's retirement system. Like most public-sector retirement plans, North Carolina's teacher pension implicitly encourages teachers to continue working until they are eligible for their pension…

Despite decades of retirement plan enrollment meetings, many employees fail to fully engage in their employer-sponsored retirement plans. Under the framework of the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of Behavior Change, this study examines the effectiveness of a financial psychology intervention designed to increase engagement in employer-sponsored…

The value of pension benefits varies widely, by a teacher's age of entry and exit. This variation is masked by the uniform rate of annual contributions, as a percent of pay, to fund benefits for all. For the first time, we unmask that variation by calculating annual costs at the individual level. In California, we find that the value of a…