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| Nearly three-quarters of baby boomer professors, or 74 percent, plan to work past 65, and a subset said they plan to never retire at all, many said they plan to continue to work for professional reasons --- 64 percent said they love their work too much to give it up. |
Q: Given reasonable health for you and your family and a stable economy, at what age do you think you might retire?
June 30 of the summer that will see me turn 62 that August.
ReplyDeleteI love my job, though it often strains all other aspects of my life (grading papers at a table in the food court with a pot of coffee at my side while the fam Christmas-shops the mall is a very typical Saturday).
I love my students, though they often strain my patience (meeting with a kid at 11:00 am, 48 hours before he is scheduled to walk the stage, so he can deliver the oral he previously refused to do and thus be cleared to actually TAKE the walk).
I love depositing a paycheck that still, after all these years, comes to me as a shock, because I love this job enough to forget--FORGET!--when payday actually is (though it took me years to get to a decent wage after having indebted myself in pursuit of it AND though I've been under a salary-freeze for three years in concession to the growing impossibility of funding a public education accessible to every child in this...erm...Great Land).
But I do not love the Cock-Blocker Brothers and the Gates duo and their forays against me and my ilk, which forays have emboldened local administrations to further erode human relations while building an ever-more pointy and shiny and through-the-glass-darkly-facaded business model.
62 and out!
I plan to retire officially at 71, after having put in 30 years as a proffie. I'm just shy of halfway through it now.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said before, I put up with it because I get to be an astronomer. I plan to keep doing research and publishing papers for as long as I can. As Donald Knuth has noted, "Being a retired professor is a lot like being an ordinary professor, except that you don't have to write research proposals, administer grants, or sit in committee meetings. Also, you don't get paid."
I met a prof who was retiring at a department functioned and inadvertently asked him "What was your subfield?" He is still working on a book. I felt So. Bad.
DeleteI met a prof who was retiring at a department functioned and inadvertently asked him "What was your subfield?" He is still working on a book. I felt So. Bad.
Delete@Frod: Yes to your quotation. Isn't that what emeritus status is for? I don't get why professors in research universities don't choose to be emeritus as soon as possible. That would let them keep doing what they loved AND provide jobs for the young whippersnappers.
Delete@Proffie: A problem with emeritus status is that you lose your lab, since the space (and sometimes even the equipment in it) is so in demand by the young whippersnappers, and I concede that they may be right to want it. Right now my department has a productive young hotshot who could easily put to better use the lab occupied by a tenured old bit of deadwood who hasn't published in years, but the deadwood won't budge. Our department Chair should put a foot in, but won't since the deadwood "will retire soon," but has been saying this for at least five years now.
DeleteI hope not to be like that. For a long time now, I've been producing some nice datasets, if I do say so myself. I could easily spend the rest of my life analyzing them, after I publish them as tables of numbers in the (relatively) new electronic journals, so the young whippersnappers can have a chance at them, too.
Based on my current financial situation, MAYBE 65. But I'll have to develop a taste for cat food. I'm in pretty good health, actually, and could imagine teaching till 70, the age of my parents. They're spry!
ReplyDelete66 for me (18 more months). Most days, I love my job. However, I love canoeing more.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, probably 65 if I can stand it. The wife has set 62 as hers, I think to give her 3 years to get ready for my constant, looming presence.
ReplyDeleteOnce I look forward to May more than I look forward to September, I'm out of here.
ReplyDeleteI can retire from state service, fully vested, all benefits covered ad infinitum, when I'm 56. At that point, I plan on "double dipping" (working at a SLAC or in another state, maybe even become a Sith Lord [consultant]) for another four or five years until the spouse is ready to retire. All the offspring "should" be through with college themselves by that time.
ReplyDeleteNever. Never ever ever. I plan to drop dead in the middle of a lecture, hopefully with the words, "But the most important thing to know for the final is..."
ReplyDelete"like"
DeleteTo clarify, I like the cheek, not the idea of your dropping dead.
DeleteI'm self-aware enough not to hold it against you if you DID like the idea of my dropping dead, though. I'm sure I've got it coming from at least a few people.
DeleteI have a long list of "things to do at work during my last year". As I move through that list, I'll be lucky if I actually last the full year and get to retire. I expect that I will have so much fun pissing off so many deserving people that one day my key will mysteriously stop opening the door to my office. A nice security officer will escort me off campus, he and I will stop to have a beer, and that will be that.
ReplyDeleteOooh, what a thing to look forward to. Your list merits a post, or if it would out you, then perhaps a thirsty.
DeleteConsidering I'm currently in grad school, I don't even want to think about this question right now, for two reasons: 1) I might never get a job from which to retire; 2) If I do get a job, I might never be able to retire without it killing all hope of financial stability.
ReplyDeleteYayyyy.
I pay a required amount of each paycheck into a state pension fund that probably will go broke long before I get to retirement age.
ReplyDeleteIdeally, I'd love to retire at 65 or so, travel internationally and hang with friends and family.
When I was in graduate school, one of the extremely elderly faculty members who was having 'such a great time' doing whatever the hell he did with his time blew his last few years of health tottering around campus. Not going out that way.
When I heard my former assistant department head retired, my first question was: "How could you tell?"
ReplyDelete65, because that year my wife turns 62 and she can retire with full benefits. But if the feds raise that age then i may stay a bit longer.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone weighed in on how great that graphic is?!
ReplyDeleteI agree!
DeleteWhen they stop making 7.62mm bullets.
ReplyDeleteThe earliest financially viable year for my retirement benefits will be when I'm 67, since I started teaching full time relatively late. The college could convince me earlier with a generous golden parachute.
ReplyDeleteI love teaching and enjoy my students most of the time. Their questions, along with discoveries and new methods in my field, keep me on my toes.
But it would be great to have more time for traveling, gardening, and community work. I don't expect to hang around teaching part time. When I go, I'll be gone.
ASAP.
ReplyDelete'Nuff sed.
I plan to "retire" to a different profession, and as soon as I can.
ReplyDeleteMy misery is all too real, and I honestly cannot say I love my job.
I feel a tremendous amount of guilt about that.
The reason I am still here is that I would like to see if I can remake myself within academia and not be miserable. So far, that is not working out all that well, LOL. The money and the time off with my kids are wonderful. I do get paid well for what I do. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt about THAT, too.
My condolences, Bella. I wish I could say I sympathize, but I can't. I love teaching - in fact, I don't really enjoy much of anything else. All the misery associated with it is worth it to me, because I love what I do so much. Also, in having worked at jobs from the lowly (ice cream man, repo guy) to the professional (office manager, network admin), I've found that the misery in most other jobs is even worse... or at least less to my personal tastes.
DeleteGood luck, Bella, and I hope you find what you're looking for.
You, I kind of like the teaching part. I used to like it more, but I don't feel like too many of them are really learning anything. I do enjoy when I feel like I am getting somewhere, learning from them, them learning from each other, I am contributing to that. But the negatives just kill it for me. I really do have to just stop whining and get somewhere that might work better for me. I have had other jobs too. I have not been miserable in them----well, except one job where I was working for lawyers! Yuck. I'd rather do ANYTHING than do that!! The path that led me here was long and varied, and I probably saw some warning signs that it was not for me but I ignored them because I had small kids at home and thought all should be sacrificed for the flexibility to be there for my kids. Your nice response shames me a bit. I have to STOP WHINING and just move on or smile and make it work better. In the short term, I am going to work on that!
DeleteMaybe you should try a radically different approach in the classroom and see if it helps to increase the amount they're learning? Like go completely topsy turvy and see if the complete opposite thing would actually stick?
Delete75; that is 22 years from now. I am about half way. But we'll see; hopefully if I start doing a bad job, others will tell me.
ReplyDeleteWhy would you start doing a bad job?
DeleteWell, I'm almost 40, I just got a full time lecturer position last year (after being adjunct for 10 years), and I'm only just now finishing my PhD. So I won't be retiring for a really long time, if ever.
ReplyDelete