Howard University, hoping to get a head start in dealing with “a considerable number” of expected retirements this decade, has joined the ranks of institutions offering tenured faculty generous retirement plans in exchange for helping it better manage its recruitment, retention and retirement efforts.
This month, 177 Howard faculty members, some with decades of tenure and service to the university, began participating in a voluntary retirement program. The one-time offer, rolled out over the past several months, offered eligible faculty customized full- or part-time employment plans for up to five years with full medical benefits and pro-rated compensation based on one’s work level.
To participate, those who qualified for and agreed to the plan agreed to take retirement effective July 1, 2012 and surrender their tenure with the institution. Most of the 177 will continue to teach at Howard either on a full- or part-time basis over the next few years.
Howard officials declined to provide an estimate of the costs and savings involved in the program, asserting it would be premature to do so, as its full impact is still being assessed.
While outside estimates put the potential cost at millions, a number of variables could affect the final number. Eligible faculty had numerous options on how much longer they wanted to work, at what level of engagement or whether they would simply take a one-year lump sum package. The final costs will also be impacted by what Howard must pay in the market to attract the caliber of scholar it hopes to recruit and retain once this cohort of 177 professors has left the school by July 1, 2017.
In deciding to pursue the strategy, Howard officials also had to consider what costs the university would incur if it did nothing to accelerate retirement in the coming years.
Their number of years in service among the group volunteering for the retirement plan runs the gamut as do their ages; since 1995, federal age discrimination laws bar mandatory retirement at age 65, with few exceptions. That helps explain assertions by some faculty at the university that nearly 80 percent of the faculty in some departments was presently eligible to retire.
