academicsAcademics who don’t retire are greedy, selfish, and bad for students

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The average age for all tenured professors nationwide is now approaching 55 and creeping upward; the number of professors 65 and older more than doubled between 2000 and 2011. In spite of those numbers, according to a Fidelity Investments study conducted about a year ago, three-quarters of professors between 49 and 67 say they will either delay retirement past age 65 or—gasp!—never retire at all. They ignore, or are oblivious to, the larger implications for their students, their departments, and their colleges.

And they delude themselves about their reasons for hanging on. In the Fidelity survey, 80 percent of those responding said their primary reason for wanting to continue as faculty members was not that they needed the money but for “personal or professional” reasons. A Fidelity spokesman offered what seemed to me a naïve interpretation of that answer: “Higher-education employees, especially faculty, are deeply committed to their students, education, and the institutions they serve.”

Maybe. But “commitment to higher education” covers some selfish pleasures.