"But many faculty view their profession as a vocation, so why would they retire? One reason is because of diminished effectiveness. Ossified approaches, diminished cognitive capacity and so on are the unhappy, but inevitable, results of aging. The person experiencing these declines is generally not the best at noticing them, as they creep in so slowly that they're most visible to outsiders or when accurately comparing to yourself from long ago."
"Joe talks about the plentiful faculty jobs when he was young. There are many reasons why they're no longer plentiful, but one of them is that there is no longer a mandatory retirement age. It was legal until 1993 for there to be a mandatory retirement age for tenured faculty (later than the general 1986 ban on mandatory retirement because lawmakers felt there were several valid arguments for a mandatory retirement age for tenured professors)."
Many faculty are deeply inspired by teaching and may continue into advanced age. Aging can produce ossified approaches and diminished cognitive capacity that reduce effectiveness, often unnoticed by the individual. Observable declines are often clearer to outsiders or when compared to one’s younger self. Historical legal changes removed mandatory retirement ages for tenured professors, contributing to fewer available faculty positions for younger academics. Excessive professional immersion can prevent development of identity outside work, making retirement frightening. Promoting better work-life balance in higher education would help faculty build fuller lives and ease transitions into retirement.
Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]