From the Editor: How Will We Retire?
Paula M. Krebs
Are you planning to retire next year? In ten years? Twenty? Whenever you're aiming for, this issue of Academe can help you think about your options as well as changes in retirement policies on the national scene. The AAUP report on those changes, presented by Valerie Martin Conley, fills us in on retirement options all over the country at different kinds of institutions. Examine your own college's policies in light of the report; use it to help in your own activism on campus around issues of retirement benefits. Paul Yakoboski of the TIAA-CREF Institute gives us the big picture as well, showing national trends in how the faculty prepares for retirement.
Saul Adelman and Mark Cross zero in on a case study-the state of Ohio and postretirement medical care for faculty members. Academe's-own Wend Maloney presents case studies of a number of recently retired faculty members from various states and different kinds of institutions. Their retirement stories, in the context of the articles about the national retirement scene, can help us all plan for that distant or not-so-distant day when, finally, our time is our own. Sigh . . .
This issue also features a range of other concerns, including two different takes on graduate education, from David Huyssen and Philip Cohen. Huyssen is a graduate student himself, as well as a member of the AAUP's Committee on Graduate and Professional Students, and he offers an informed critique of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's Responsive PhD project. Cohen is a graduate dean, and his article offers practical advice for graduate administrators who want to do the right thing for their programs.
Mayra Besosa's piece about contingent labor in California is as timely as they come. The California Faculty Association is, as I write (in April), celebrating a contract agreement that averted a shike across the California State University system.
The rest of the articles in this issue range widely, from science education to stamp collecting. Rebecca Jordan tackles the topic of science faculty's need to come out of isolation and connect to the public. Sheryl Burgstahler teaches us about accessibility. Students in wheelchairs are not the only ones who need accessible classrooms-universal sign principles can be applied in every class and will benefit every student. William Handorf's unusual article focuses on U.S. higher education in commemorative postage stamps.
Finally, Kevin Brown cautions all of us to be careful about our commencement day jokes about graduates' college loan debt. It's not that they don't have a sense of humor; it's just that our students, and even our new colleagues, who are tens of thousands of dollars in debt for their education have a right to be a wee bit sensitive.
Any of you who are making a difference on your own campuses or in state legislatures--please share your stories with us at Academe. We love to run Fighting Back features that all about campus activism. Contact me if you (or any of your colleagues) have a good story to share.
With this issue, we bid farewell to a long-time mainstay of this magazine, managing editor Wendi Maloney It's hard for me to imagine the magazine without Wendi's keen editorial eye, her excellent sense of the issues, and her gentle way of keeping me on schedule.
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