Retirement exodus possible

In the next five years, CSUS is facing a greying of its professors with the possible retirement of 30 to 40 percent of faculty in departments that would release their figures.

Age demographics show that a high number of faculty are nearing the age where they will be eligible to retire, according to David Wagner, dean of Faculty and Staff Affairs.

While exact numbers are not available for the university as a whole, statistics from two departments give a grim picture.

Val Smith, chair of communication studies, says 23 out of 51 full- and part-time faculty will be eligible for retirement within the next few years.

The School of Nursing has 8 out of 22 eligible, according to Chair Robyn Nelson.

In the worst case scenario, according to Smith, if all the eligible faculty retire at once, there will be a major disruption in providing service to the students and he believes that relying on part timers without doctorates will lower the prestige of the university.

“We might have a hard time offering classes,” Smith said. “The university needs to begin hiring junior faculty now, or there will be major disruptions in services to students.”

However, both Smith and Wagner were quick to point out that just because a professor is eligible for retirement, doesn’t mean he or she necessarily will. Many take advantage of the Faculty Early Retirement Plan.

The FERP allows the professor to take on half a load, teaching full time for one semester or half-time for two semesters each year.

With retiring tenured faculty, part-time instructors pick up more classes, but that does not mean they will become full-time.

“Communication studies has excellent part time teachers,” Smith said. “But tenure requires a doctorate level education, and many part timers don’t have that. Also, part timers often have other jobs, and full-time teaching isn’t one of their career goals.”

The impact on nursing students will be much greater, according to Nelson.

“In this discipline, we have master’s level clinicians who can step in, which will not diminish the quality of the clinical experience at all. But right now we are having trouble recruiting those qualified personnel at the salaries we offer.”

A competent nurse practitioner can make $80,000 per year, Nelson said, and the university system just can not match or beat it. To complicate the situation, throughout the state nursing is in crisis with attracting and filling positions.

“We’re in a position of needing to increase enrollment at a time when our faculty are greying,” she said. If the school can’t fill the teaching slots, then it cannot attract an adequate number of students to alleviate the crisis facing the state.

Wagner said that CSUS is aware of the potential crisis, and has been preparing for it for years. “The departments and colleges prepared hiring plans a couple of years ago,” he said. These are updated periodically.

In terms of possible curriculum gaps, Wagner sees some benefits to having a large number of faculty retire.

“Departments will have the opportunity to change the discipline or major, to add new things which we couldn’t do before with a stable faculty.”

It will also allow departments to develop new focuses and emphasize recent developments within disciplines. “It would not mean that majors would go away,” he said, but it will enable the departments to take advantage of new ideas and directions.

Smith also sees the situation as an economic benefit for the university and its students. “Just replacing senior faculty with junior faculty saves the university lots of money.”

The Academic Affairs committee of the Faculty Senate looks at the reliance on part time faculty when performing program peviews. This looks at the way part time staff is being used and how it affects the program, said Bob Buckley, chair of the faculty senate.

Wagner says the current part time faculty are able to be considered for the positions, but the university searches nationally for faculty, so they would be competing with many other candidates.

But, he said, in a number of instances, the university finds that the existing part time faculty is the most qualified person for the job.