Professors and retirement and the incoming blizzard

So over at the NYT, which seems to have given up real reporting in favor of being Mark C. (gotta remember the C.) Taylor's blog, there is this headline: Professors who won't retire.  There's the usual yawn-worthy submissions by the one who is such a good citizen he or she will voluntarily make room for the bright young minds, the one who wants us to value age and experience, Taylor's typical pandering to an American public suspicious of lay-about elites, and a few others. 

I'm sure there are real pros and cons here, and it's possible to debate this issue intelligently, but that's not what we do here. 

Solemmetellyou about our 90 year-old proffie and the search to replace him. 90 year-old proffie has known for some time that he's not going to be able to keep going. Lord knows, it ain't because he's not spry: I walked with him from the fleabag motel he stays in ("to save the program money")  to my place in the ghetto where Snooty Uni is located, and he set a pace that buried me, 50 years his junior. I'm done worrying about that guy getting mugged because he could probably outrun any gangbangers who have ever polluted their bodies with either caffeine or bad city air. 

No, Professor Oldy is packing it in because one of his senses is going, and as a result, he feels bad that he can't teach as well as he could a year or two ago--which was brilliantly, btw.

We've tried to replace Professor Oldy with three major searches.  We've even found money for a *chair* for the replacement. We have offered this position--and the chair--to numerous young pup scholars, none of whom actually deserve a chair, and all of them have said "no". 

 Granted, the endowment from the chair is small, but we are a very well-to-do private uni. Our salaries are good--damn good. We have staff for everything.  Why can't we replace Professor Oldy?  

Because Professor Oldy for 40 years has run our satellite campus in Much Less Desirable Location, and to replace Oldy you'd have to live there. Is this place somewhere truly ghastly? No. It's just a smallish region, where many people live and work and lead perfectly decent lives. It's not in some gun-toting, militia-fostering bastion of inbreeding. You can, in fact, find both public transit and Thai food there. 

 But it is not, apparently, a good enough place to live for a generation of scholars whom people tell me are so desperate for work they are waiting for people to retire or (even better, with some of my colleagues) die.  

In strict fairness, one little pumpkin said she would consider the position after we made a spousal hire available (we did) only if we would arrange housing in a nearby bobo-heaven urban playground and provide a lavish budget for jetting to and fro and a pied-a-terre in Undesirable Locale. My dean, who is a genuinely patient man, got tired of having his nuts in this idiot's vice and finally said no, I guess when she demanded that every Wednesday be "free cupcakes with sprinkles on top" day and male eunuchs with ostrich feather fans. 

My colleagues are not entirely innocent, either. Rather than just suckitup and consider a less entitled little snowflakes from less snooty PhD programs--who can probably do the job perfectly well--they go into conniptions when I even suggest it. "We can't lower our standards!" They howl. Even though Professor Oldy was from a Moo U and is retiring as one of the discipline's most revered and accomplished icons.  

So let's be more specific. Professors in desirable places need to retire, like right now, no matter what their productivity, financial condition,  or contributions to the department to make room for the incoming blizzard from Ivy-land. You proffies who live in less ritzy places? Or you who foolishly didn't go to the snootiest grad program you possibly could? Carry on.