Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post on the end of mandatory retirement for university professors. I quoted a number of men who argued that having a standard retirement age hurts women. Here's an extract from that original post:
Thomas Klassen and David Macgregor, writing in the CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) Bulletin, challenged ageism in academy on the grounds that "Mandatory retirement at an arbitrary age is devastating for female faculty who often began their careers later than males and may have had interruptions to raise children."
Gender-equity is also the basis of Lloyd Spurrell and Ahmed Hussein's arguments against what they call "Rule 65":
Because of their longer life expectancy, women must contribute significantly more to their pension plan by the time they are 65, if they are to be as financially secure as a man in the same situation. Women have to contribute enough for 20 years while men have to contribute enough for only 15 years. Why should women be discriminated against in this manner?
Yes, there are older female academics who will enjoy greater financial security as a result being able to work past 65. But let's think not about anecdotes - the stories of particular men and particular women. Overall, how many of the beneficiaries from the end of mandatory retirement are men, and how many are women? Who bears the costs of the transition?
Almost 15 years after the end of mandatory retirement, evidence on who takes advantage of the opportunity to work longer is mounting up. Unsurprisingly, it's those who were advocating for the elimination of a standard retirement age - men.
The CAUT almanac, available here, gives the number of full-time university professors in Canada by age. Here is the number of male and female full-time university teachers by in 2007-8, shortly after the standard retirement age was eliminated (rounded to the nearest 10), along with the percentage who are male:
| Number of full-time university teachers by age, 2007-08 | |||||
| Rounded to nearest 10. Source: Calculated from 2010-11 CAUT Almanac, Table 2.10. | |||||
| 50 to 54 | 55 to 59 | 60 to 64 | 65 to 69 | 70+ | |
| Male | 4,060 | 3,950 | 3,880 | 1,180 | 210 |
| Female | 2,340 | 1,910 | 1,240 | 230 | 30 |
| % male | 63.4% | 67.4% | 75.8% | 83.7% | 87.5% |
Unsurprisingly, in 2007-8, men pre-dominated in the oldest age groups - a legacy of the barriers women once faced in accessing full-time, tenure-track university positions.
But let's age these people 10 years, and see how many of them are still employed a decade later. If we take the 50 to 54 age cohort, and age them up 10 years, we actually have slightly more attrition among men than among female. This is not really surprising - the mortality rate for men in their 50s is higher than the mortality rate for women. Moreover there is a big financial hit associated with retiring before 65 in a lot of pension plans, and women may not be able to afford to take that hit.
However if we look at the 55 to 59 cohort in 2007-8, and compare it to the 65 to 69 cohort in 2017-18, we see that it has become more male-dominated over time. The over-representation of men continues to increase as we move up the age distribution: in 2017-18 the 70+ cohort was 78.8% male.
| Number of full-time university teachers by age, 2017-18. | |||
| Source: CAUT Almanac | |||
| 60 to 64 | 65 to 69 | 70+ | |
| Male | 3,060 | 1,815 | 1,113 |
| Female | 1,902 | 801 | 300 |
| % male | 61.7% | 69.4% | 78.8% |
It's not hard to figure out what's going on here. People make retirement decisions by weighing up the costs and benefits of continuing to be employed.
There are lots of reasons to expect that female academics typically benefit less than men do from continuing in academic employment past the age of 65: they're less likely to have young or university-aged children to support, they're less likely to have a younger spouse who is still working (couples tend to synchronize retirement decisions), and they're less likely to be respected by colleagues and students as wise experts and leaders. Our society doesn't value older women, and universities reflect the values held by society as a whole.
There are also reasons to expect that the costs of continuing in employment will be higher for female professors -- the opportunity cost of not being able to care for a parent, partner, or grandchild, and the costs of meeting students' expectations that their female professors will be helpful, caring and organized.
I'm pretty sure that, for me, the costs of continuing to work past 65 will far outweigh the benefits, and I'll be happy to retire. But even if I was still enjoying teaching, I still believe retiring at 65 is the right thing to do.
First, there are juniors out there who are as smart and capable as me, if not smarter. They deserve the opportunity to have an academic position, and make an impact on the world.
Second, mandatory retirement is a bulwark against the end of tenure. If universities can't get rid of professors when they're old, they'll start finding other means to shed unwanted professors - and that's unlikely to be pretty.
Nathan - I've unpublished your comment because I can't see how it's relevant to this particular blog post. If you have a concern with that, please send me an email - Frances
Posted by: Frances Woolley | September 25, 2020 at 07:54 PM
Removing mandatory retirement is one way of addressing concerns that the aging of the population will mean that an increased proportion of dependent oldies will have to be supported by a decreasing proportion of people in the prime working age.
Surely academe should have a more sophisticated way of managing performance than tolerating almost any performance up to an arbitrary age after which no performance is accepted.
Posted by: Gavin Moodie | September 27, 2020 at 07:32 AM
Gavin,
You've got to the crux of the issue. But let me put it into perspective for you. Academics' job mostly consists of teaching and research.
Research output is relatively easy to measure, however the social value of that output is almost impossible to judge. Think, e.g., of psychologists who have built stellar careers on the basis of findings that have failed to replicate (e.g. here). So as long as you keep churning stuff out, you're safe, no matter what the value of it is. You can say "ah, but peer evaluation" - but peers can form little circles of like-minded scholars, form their own journals, and referee each other's work.
Teaching could, perhaps, be judged, I don't know. Right now my teaching is being evaluated on the basis of a short questionnaire that the vast majority of students don't fill in. There is little to no evaluation of the content of what I teach, or how much my students have learned.
Should we do something better than this? Perhaps. But it would be enormously costly - see, e.g., the UK's short-lived experiment with teaching assessment exercises. It could easily end up having perverse effects as academics neglect the intangible (and often socially productive) aspects of their jobs, e.g. meeting with students, in favour of stuff that is measured by the performance indicators. Or student satisfaction is boosted the cheap and easy way i.e. by offering entertaining and undemanding courses. (You think I exaggerate - look at the rapid spread of fall break weeks across Canadian universities - "it improves student satisfaction").
How about this as an alternative? Academics after 5 or 10 years into their job go up for tenure, at which point their contract is either extended or they are let go. We could have a second tenure exercise after people have been in their jobs for 30 years - kind of like the annual driving tests people have to take after they reach a certain age - and either they pass or they are let go.
And remember - it's not that "no performance is accepted." After profs retire they can continue to do research as emeritus professors, and teach courses on a contract basis. Basically after they retire they get paid the spot price for their labour - which hardly seems unfair, does it?
Posted by: Frances Woolley | September 29, 2020 at 10:17 AM
Since Frances is proving that she is a high productivity employee, the pen has moved on, but I still feel impelled to comment, at risk of being irrelevant.
The academy is the ultimate in credentialed employment. At least in theory, academics are the most skilled of all workers. My humble employment sector, on the other hand, resists the concept of skilled employment entirely. Senior employees are therefore "high cost," and not "highly skilled," and targeted for attrition by early retirement offers. (Which is strange; a senior academic might be deemed to be "high cost" as well and targeted for aggressive buyout as well.) For this reason the end of mandatory retirement might as well have happened on the Moon for all that it affects retail.
But a curious thing has happened. Managers in retail are becoming increasingly eager to attract "high cost" employees to their stores. This has reached the point where chain retail operations are closing profitable branches, if not deliberately, at least without putting up much of a fight against developers.
The demographic background and the nature of the conceptual error needn't detain us. What does occur to me is that this is precisely the problem --and sector-- where the end of mandatory retirement was supposed to be an answer to a real problem. Strangely, however, the superannuated employees only accumulate in the well-paid and less physically strenuous sectors of the economy.
It's almost as though the problem was never the retirement age at all. I would speculate on what it might be, but I would just be accused of being greedy.
Posted by: Erik Lund | September 30, 2020 at 11:20 AM
Erik - not irrelevant at all.
You raise a crucial point: tenure-track academic positions are tightly rationed, and the demand for those positions (except in a small number of technical subjects) far outstrips the supply. That's why rotating people in and out of these positions is so important from an equity point of view, and there is no "we don't have enough working age people to fill jobs" problem.
I think you're in Vancouver, aren't you? The big issue there, as I see it, is that people who don't already have equity in the property market can't afford to live in Vancouver on the wages paid by retail employers. And those who do have equity in the property market would rather liquidate their real estate assets and move some place where house prices are lower than work retail!
The one thing I didn't emphasize enough in my original post, however, is that I'm not talking about forcing tenured professors not to work - I'm talking about ending an almost uniquely generous employment contract (judges are the closest parallel in terms of occupations, and you see where letting judges choose when they're going to retire can lead you!)
Posted by: Frances Woolley | September 30, 2020 at 12:17 PM