At colleges, presidents, provosts, and even faculty senates are taking a fresh look at how to manage professors' retirements. A few institutions that have sought to trim their tenured-faculty ranks for other reasons offer early lessons for those institutions that want to encourage retirements. Many institutions are doing just that, using managerial tools such as buyouts and "phased retirement," or the gradual reduction of work schedules. However, there is one challenge: Professors actually like their jobs, and often do not want to leave them. This article suggests that for college leaders trying to steer their institutions through some tricky political shoals as colleges come under attack for high costs, low accountability, and a failure to meet labor-force needs, the wave of retirements may be an opportunity to get a better grip on the wheel. The situation, says Paul J. Yakoboski, a principal research fellow and retirement scholar with the TIAA-CREF Institute, "creates the opportunity for the universities to rethink their offerings and how to provide them."