Education: Academia's New Gypsies

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Most temporaries and junior professors, however, are subservient to administrators and senior faculty in their own departments and feel wary of espousing anything too controversial. Norma Feshbach, chair of the UCLA Department of Education, notes that some apprehensive juniors tailor their work, down to the smallest details of research methodologies, with an eye to supervisor approval and eventual publication. Says she: "This may not contribute to society or science, but it does to tenure." Both students and junior faculty agree, moreover, that the quality of classroom instruction suffers when untenured teachers are distracted by pursuing requirements that have become too hidebound or arcane.

The one great hope of the have-nots has been that, during the next eight years, the presiding cohort of senior professors -- some 40% of tenured faculty -- will reach conventional retirement ages of 62 to 65. But federal law now forbids any mandatory retirements that are based on age. For academics, this blanket rule, passed by Congress last summer, is phased to take final effect in 1994, raising the possibility that after that date professors might enjoy tenure until death. However, says Mary Gray, a mathematician at American University in Washington and member of a committee on tenure of the American Association of University Professors: "Universities and colleges are no longer willing to commit to having faculty on forever."

The California state-university system is trying to ease the pressure at the top by offering sweetened early-retirement inducements to 55-year-olds, who can receive normal benefits (worth $11,844 a year) plus up to 40% of salary by going part time themselves. During the past two years, nearly 1,800 have bought the package. Haverford College, outside Philadelphia, is considering offering new tenure candidates 25- to 30-year contracts. While forthrightly businesslike on the surface, however, such contracts could eventually trigger age-discrimination charges if new short-term agreements are offered to some older faculty members but not to others.

As colleges wrestle with solutions, the effects of the dilemma on the professoriat are becoming critical. Kenneth Mortimer, vice president of Pennsylvania State University and an expert on faculty hiring, notes that some 20 years ago, 1.8% of entering freshmen were interested in academic careers. Today only a minuscule .2% want anything to do with the poor job prospects and salaries that are generally below those of the corporate world. In addition, says Mortimer, "those we trained in the 1970s who went and got jobs driving cabs with their Ph.D.s now are doing something else and are lost to the profession." If some way can be found to deal fairly with the elders, he adds, then in the 1990s "we'll need ((those dropouts)), and they won't be there."