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September 18, 2008
Here's a silly question about the current economic news - "Will Professors Delay Retirements?"
I'm not saying that anyone lied to me (especially in the early 21st Century, where "being wrong on the basis of partial information" is the same as "telling deliberate lies"), but I first heard the 'coming great wave of retirement' line in the Fall of 1983 when certain entirely well-meaning professors told me and my compatriots that maybe graduate school was finally not such a bad idea after all. There would be retirements! And jobs!
I haven't seen it yet.
Of our retirees last year, one was accelerated by a medical condition and one by a spouse's work-related move. A third was pretty much planned. This in a faculty of something like 180, and from 3 professors with 113 years of combined service. Not that they aren't all fabulous people, professors who I would have been delighted to take courses from myself, and colleagues I regularly pushed advisees toward, but 113 years of combined service and only 1 unforced retirement.
There are and will be, for the foreseeable future, very few jobs. Those of us who get them or have them are lucky - lots of other very qualified people could have filled the same positions.
I figure the biggest shift in the academic market - and this is just a guess - are new positions reflecting new curricular areas. I'm sure those new position creations will at some institutions come at the cost of traditional lines.
Further - see this from Tim Burke - Planned Contraction or Chaotic Retreat?
Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 18, 2008 12:42 PM