Ways We Retire

Recent faculty retirees around the nation tell us their  stories.

By Wendi A. Maloney

A State University

“It just dawned on me that it was time to go,” says Vicki Sharp, who in 2003 entered the Faculty Early Retirement Program (FERP) at California State University– Northridge, where she had taught for thirty-four years. “You shouldn’t wait too long on any job to step down.” Sharp’s decision was eased by the fact that her husband, Richard—who had already retired from Northridge—was enjoying a life of “self-scheduled semiproductivity.” Her choice was also made easier because she knew her finances were secure and she could continue to teach. “It’s really nice,” Sharp says. “I don’t have to work, but I love teaching.” Under the FERP program, tenured faculty members “phase into” retirement /by teaching half time for five years. Their compensation is prorated, but it is at the same rank and salary level they had before retirement. Participants are eligible for salary and merit increases. At the same time, they begin to draw on their retirement income.

Like other state employees in California, faculty members at public institutions participate in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), a defined-benefit retirement program. Individual retirement benefits are calculated according to a formula that takes into account years of service, age at retirement, and final compensation. CalPERS also provides health-care plans; more than two-thirds of retired state workers are enrolled in the HMO option. Employers contribute to the retirees’ monthly premiums, and the retirees cover the difference between the employer’s contribution and the actual premium amount.

To plan the timing of her retirement, Sharp says she consulted the human resources office on her campus. “The office has wonderful, helpful people who will sit down with you and figure out your finances,” she reports. In addition to her CalPERS retirement income, she receives income from a supplemental tax-deferred retirement plan she started just after beginning teaching. “I put aside extra money for this plan every month,” she says. “It’s worked out really well for me.”

Sharp, who has a PhD in educational psychology, teaches computer courses in the education department one semester each year. When she is not teaching, she writes books and articles related to her field. Since retirement, she has started to write creatively as well. In addition, she says she has “loads of time” to enjoy other interests with her husband. They travel, read, exercise, and attend the theater and chamber music concerts. “There’s not enough time to do everything I want to do,” Sharp says.

Despite her happiness with her retirement, Sharp sees one downside. The FERP plan moves faculty members not only out of their former offices, but also out of the buildings that house departmental colleagues. Because of the lack of space in her FERP office, Sharp has to meet with students in the hallway. “The office is so remote, people don’t know I exist,” she says. Besides being inconvenient, the office location undercuts collegiality among department members, Sharp notes. “When I was an assistant professor, I was so glad older faculty were around—they filled an important role by mentoring younger colleagues. Now that’s not possible.”

A Community College

“I loved my job,” says Marilyn Carien, who retired from Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin. “But I wasn’t the only one who could do it. I felt I should let a younger person have a chance.” As she approached fifty-seven, the age at which she would be eligible for early retirement, she began to consider leaving the institution at which she had taught English for more than thirty years. Under MATC’s early-retirement program—negotiated by the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers—faculty who agree to retire at a certain date receive fully paid health coverage until age sixty-five, when they become eligible for Medicare.

Carien says she found the plan enticing but didn’t act precipitately. She took a careful look at her spending patterns in recent years to determine if her retirement income would be sufficient to cover her costs. The Wisconsin Retirement System, in which MATC faculty members participate, calculates monthly retirement benefits according to two methods. Retirees can select a benefit based on a multiple of their three highest annual salaries and years of service. Alternatively, they can choose a benefit that multiplies their contributions to their retirement account and those of their employer by a factor based on their age when the benefit begins.

Carien determined that the first method would yield a higher monthly benefit for her. To improve her retirement income, she decided to make sure her final three years of salary would be the highest of her career. “I worked very hard my last three years at MATC,” Carien says. “I substituted for colleagues who couldn’t cover their classes, something I had not done as much of in previous years, and I took on extra work that increased my annual compensation.” Moreover, she enjoyed it. “When you know it’s going to be over soon, it is even more joyful to teach,” she says. Carien succeeded in making her final three years her best paid. In addition, she received a lump-sum payment of $30,000 for sick days she had earned but not used.

Before retiring in 2002, Carien helped found an MATC retirement association. Among its activities, the association developed seminars that help faculty members understand the financial and psychological ramifications of retirement. In a recent seminar, retired faculty talked about how they came to realize how closely their sense of self-worth had been tied to their work.  Retirement for them meant adjusting to different life circumstances. Although the transition was often difficult, all of the speakers found meaningful postretirement activities. One now teaches English as a second language; others engage in volunteer activities or socialize more with friends.

As for Carien, she enjoys traveling, kayaking, and volunteering in political campaigns. One year, she taught in Japan full time; another year, she and her partner built a vacation home in North Carolina. She has now learned to play the mandolin and bass fiddle and performs in informal “gigs.” “It’s like a box of candy,” she says of her retirement.

Two Research Universities

“The level of benefits at Cornell helps faculty make the decision to retire,” explains physicist Donald Holcomb, who entered Cornell University’s phased-retirement plan in 1993. Under the plan, he taught half time for two years, receiving prorated compensation, after which he fully retired. Holcomb says he found that his active laboratory research with PhD students had come to a “natural termination” by the early 1990s, and his interests had shifted to physics education as a result of his close association with the American Association of Physics Teachers. To support his postretirement academic activities, he negotiated with the university for funds to pay for travel, computer, and publications expenses. Today, all Cornell faculty who retire with emeritus status receive a stipend for such purposes.

More than ten years after retiring, Holcomb still uses his university-provided office regularly. He says he does a small amount of research, teaches a graduate seminar on physics instruction, and works with several colleagues on a project to improve teaching methodology in physics courses. Holcomb says his activities allow him “to have a good time. I began at Cornell in 1954. A lot of my life is woven into the people and programs at the institution, and it just seems natural to continue the association.” Cornell University is unique among major American research institutions in that it combines private and publicly assisted colleges. Six of the colleges located on its Ithaca, New York, campus are private. Faculty in these colleges participate in defined-contribution retirement programs. The faculty at Cornell’s publicly assisted colleges are covered by benefits programs provided to the State University of New York campuses by the state of New York. They have a choice of participating in a defined-benefit retirement plan sponsored by the state or a TIAA-CREF defined-contribution plan. Faculty in all of Cornell’s colleges, public and private, are eligible to take advantage of the university’s phased-retirement program.

At Duke University, a private institution, faculty participate in a defined-contribution plan. Political scientist Ole Holsti, who retired from Duke in 1998, contributed to his TIAA-CREF account throughout his career, which took him from Stanford University to the University of British Columbia to Duke. “I began participating early in my career. Wherever I went, I contributed the maximum amount allowable.” Holsti also invested in stocks and supplemental retirement accounts with other providers. “I’m pretty meticulous about saving,” he says. “And I’m pleased with the returns on my TIAA-CREF account. I can sleep at night.”

Duke offered no incentive for Holsti to retire. “I just decided on my own,” he says. Since his retirement, his schedule has not changed much. “My life is exactly the way it was before except for no committees and no pay.” Holsti teaches one or two courses a year, for which he receives a small honorarium, and he continues a busy research program. He specializes in international politics and foreign-policy decision making; his latest book, Making American Foreign Policy, was published last year.

Holsti is especially grateful for Duke’s health plan for retirees, which he calls a “very, very good benefit.” He pays a monthly stipend for himself and paid a substantially higher stipend for his wife, who died recently after having suffered from poor health. In addition to medical benefits, Holsti has an office in the political science department and part-time secretarial support.

A Part-Time Professor

When Virginia Jones and her husband interviewed for two positions in the mathematics department at Central Connecticut State University in the late 1960s, they were told that nepotism rules prohibited the department from hiring a married couple. So Jones accepted a part-time appointment that entailed teaching three courses a semester; a full load was four courses.

“As time went on,” Jones says, “I found that I preferred a part-time schedule, and I never again applied for a full-time position.” Over the next thirty-six years, she taught math and computer science part time, although she occasionally taught full time when a colleague would leave suddenly. She shared an office with her husband.

In 1980, her teaching load dropped to two courses a semester after the Connecticut State University chapter of the AAUP, in its first contract with the university, negotiated a limit on the amount part-time faculty can teach. The contract also included a pay a raise for part-timers. “It’s a changing landscape for part-time employment,” she explains. “Those of us trying to preserve as many full-time faculty positions as possible support limiting the part-time workforce. On my campus, the number of part-time faculty almost equals that of full-time faculty.”

As a part-time employee in the Connecticut State system, “it is advantageous to retire after you get enough years in,” Jones says. She explains that, as a part-time professor, she had no health benefits before retiring. But after she stepped down, the state began paying 100 percent of her medical costs under a group medical insurance plan. The state’s defined-benefit plan calculated Jones’s retirement income according to a multiple of her years of service and the average of her three highest annual salaries. The benefit was then adjusted to reflect the portion of the standard full-time schedule she worked.

Jones also contributed to her campus 403(b) plan starting in 1995. “My husband had a 403(b) account long before I did,” she says. “But my campus didn’t permit part-time faculty to participate until 1995.” Once part-time faculty became eligible for the 403(b) plan, they could consult the human resources department about the different plans available and their options.

When Jones’s husband retired, he attained emeritus status and was included in a special ceremony. Part-time faculty, however, typically receive no recognition, no matter how long they have taught. “My library card probably wouldn’t be good any longer,” Jones says. In addition, although retired full-time faculty members at Central Connecticut have get-togethers several times a year, retired part-time faculty members are not included. “Many part-time faculty would like to have closer ties to their institutions, both when they are working and in retirement,” she says.

Jones and her husband now live in Greenbelt, Maryland, near their daughter, Cathy, who is a staff member at the AAUP’s Washington office. Jones volunteers as an information specialist at the Smithsonian Institution. “Had I stayed in Connecticut, I probably would have continued teaching,” she says, explaining that she could have drawn her retirement benefits while being paid to teach. “But I’m totally happy with the way things worked out. I have no regrets.”

Wendi Maloney was managing editor of Academe from September 1997 to March 2007.

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