A frequent reader of The Chronicle might conclude that our universities are haunted by the specter of a campus clogged with geriatric professors waving canes in one hand and tattered lecture notes in the other. There seems to be a widespread assumption that junior faculty are productive and engaged, and senior faculty are nonproductive and disengaged. We—those of us 50 and above—are criticized for consuming excessive salaries, held responsible for the alarming rise in the costs of health insurance, viewed as dull and obsolete, and condemned for blocking the careers of more dynamic, and younger, faculty.
The dire implications of an aging faculty preoccupy a lot of academic pundits. A recent essay in The Chronicle Review argued that "retirement is central to the renewal of the American university" and went on to urge us to "make a timely retirement alluring" by inspiring faculty to "envision their retirement." More pointedly, the economist Paul Romer told Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz, authors of the 2009 book From Poverty to Prosperity, "If we are not careful, we could let ... things like tenure and hierarchical structures and peer review slowly morph over time so that the old guys control more and more of what's going on and the young people have a harder and harder time doing something really different, and that would be a bad thing for these processes of growth and change."
To read the full, original article click on this link: Older Professors: Fewer, and Better, Than You Think - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Author: Susan Kemper
