On December 12, 2006 the long reign of mandatory retirement in Ontario universities will come to an end.
Coincidentally, in the next half decade about 30 per cent of professors in the province will mark their 65th birthday.

Across Canada some 12,000 university teachers will attain the traditional retirement age between 2005 and 2011. A similar retirement wave is building in government and the private sector. What are the implications of this unprecedented transformation?

Policy-makers talk about the "three R's" of 21st century higher education: retirement, recruitment and retention. An additional term may help capture this period of rapid change: age diversity.

Retirement

At least since Stephen Leacock's 1935 ejection from McGill, Canadian universities have relied on mandatory retirement, in part to offer a springboard for aspiring young professors. Never evenly enforced, compulsory retirement disappeared in Quebec and Manitoba in the 1980s. Canadian universities replaced retiring professors during the 1990s with large numbers of part-time and sessional teachers. Recent shifts in the structure of faculty salaries have severely reduced the cost-effectiveness of replacing senior faculty with tenure-track hires.

Mandatory retirement arose from, and contributed to a pernicious form of ageism, driving an arbitrary wedge between young and old faculty. Confronted with the prospect of forced retirement, many academics were bewildered and discouraged in their final years at work. Retirees complained of being treated as non-persons. Recently, Canadian universities found it difficult to attract internationally known scholars over age 55.

Ontario university administrators are worried that without mandatory retirement a large number of academics will keep working past 65. According to Statistics Canada, mandatory retirement is a significant restraint on some university teachers' decisions to keep working beyond the age of 65. Without the rule, about a third fewer Ontario faculty will retire at age 65 than in the past.

But these numbers need to be kept in perspective. Most university teachers leave campus before hitting age 64. Indeed, the average retirement age for academics is between 62 and 63-only one year above that for all Canadian workers. Professors at Canadian universities without mandatory retirement retire, on average, about six months later than those at universities enforcing compulsory exit. Academics over the traditional age of retirement make up less than four per cent of faculty at universities without mandatory retirement. The proportion is similar in American post-secondary institutions.

Recruitment

Ontario universities confront unparalleled recruitment needs over the next half-decade. The giant wave of retirements is only part of the problem.

Last spring the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations estimated that more than 10,000 new positions are required to make the province a leader in high quality education. It is far from that now. The current student-faculty ratio is 24:1 compared to 15.1 in top North American post-secondary institutions. Moreover, Canadian graduate schools can produce only a small fraction of PhDs necessary for the expected growth in positions.

Unlike in the past, universities confront stiff competition for newly minted PhDs. Private industry and government offer salaries and working conditions that may top those of post-secondary institutions.

Universities are concerned not only to attract new faculty but also to retain those already in the ranks. Beginning pay has soared while mid-career academics suffer from salary compression. Universities must address the issue of underpaid mid-career faculty burdened with heavy course loads-a legacy of severe budget cuts in the 1990s. With increased teaching demands, and inordinate expectations for tenure-related service and publication, younger and mid-career professors suffer from a lack of integration in their personal and professional lives.

Retention

A moment in Western's history indicates the value of keeping experienced talent.

In the 1950s most Ontario lawyers were trained the old way, as apprentices in law firms. A visionary named Ivan C. Rand changed all that when he became dean of Western's newly founded Law School in 1959. Rand had just retired from the Supreme Court at age 75.

Of course there are few individuals like Ivan Rand, one of Canada's intellectual heroes. But with the removal of compulsory retirement, Western-like other Ontario universities-should seize the opportunity to retain and benefit from older faculty. Veteran academics are in a position to crack the mould of antiquated practices and encourage better programs in a host of areas, including undergraduate teaching. Senior professors are needed to mentor newly hired faculty. Already established as scholars and researchers, veteran professors may be able to devote more time to university service, mentoring early career academics, and advising graduate students.

Age Diversity

Universities ought to welcome and encourage age diversity in place of rigid structures based on false assumptions of frailty and declining productivity among older professors.

Modernist disregard of elder knowledge is an aberration.

For the Greeks, philosophers almost by definition were older men. Aged women served in high ceremonial roles, such as priestesses. Abesses like Saint Hilda, who died at age 66 in 680, ran the monasteries that nourished Christian thought. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, born in 1660, became in her later years one of England's most vigorous and powerful figures, dying at age 84. Methodist founder John Wesley admitted to feeling old at age 86. Sofonisba Anguissola, counted among the most accomplished artists of the 17th century, painted her last self-portrait at age 78; she lived to 92.

Clearly, innovation and creativity are not found only among the young. As researcher David Galenson shows, there are two forms of creativity, belonging to very different points of the life cycle. Conceptual innovators typically turn their discipline upside down at a young age, while experimental innovators produce great work after extended periods of trial and error. Piet Mondrian painted his masterwork, Broadway Boogie-Woogie, at age 71. While French poet Rimbaud quit at age 19, American writer Elizabeth Bishop published her much-anthologized One Art at age 65. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed his most famous building, Fallingwater, when he was 70 years old.

Ageist stereotypes will be challenged in the future by a growing critical mass of senior academics. But university administrators should take the lead in creating what age-wave theorist Ken Dychtwald calls, a culture that honours experience.

A first step should be to eliminate mandatory retirement ahead of the law-as the University of Toronto has done-rather than force members of "the class of 2006" into unwanted retirement.

Whenever an older academic walks out the door, the university loses decades of critical knowledge and scholarly connections. Administrators should reach out to those already retired, increasing pay and benefits for part-time teaching and finding ways to draw from the considerable resource pool offered by emeritus faculty. Senior Scholar/Retiree research centres pioneered in Canada by the University of Toronto suggests a valuable route for other universities to follow.

Retirement as sudden withdrawal is grossly oversold-disappearance of workplace social connections and routines is often devastating. New configurations should be available for faculty, including temporary leave programs, early retirement with an opportunity to re-enter the workplace; and flexible retirement with reduced workloads and service responsibilities.

A culture that honours experience should watch for symbolic cues that shut out veteran academics. Academic discourse is replete with ageist language and clouded thinking that gratuitously alienates older faculty. (Avoiding the term "faculty renewal," with its implicit comparison of older professors with a rotted city core, would be a nice start-"generational turnover" is more accurate and less insulting).

University campuses, like other enterprises in our ageing society, will soon feature a larger proportion of veteran workers. Youth may lose its lustre as a defining criterion for excellence and desirability. Everyone will benefit from this restoration of the full range human endeavour to the pursuit of knowledge.

The writer, David MacGregor, is a Professor of Sociology at King's University College at the University of Western Ontario. He can be reached at mcgregor@uwo.ca