Age 70 retirement for faculty: An institutional approach

Postponed faculty retirements, combined with declining student enrollments and persistent inflation, are causing increasing concern in higher education. The 1978 Amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act establish the mandatory retirement age at 70, but exempt tenured faculty from this provision until 1982. The legislation focuses attention on the retirement aspect of the problem, and researchers are busy analyzing the issue to help the industry plan for the impact of the new law.Most analysts approach the task from the aggregate perspective, and apply industry norms to individual institutions. The variations among institutions undermines the validity of this approach. This article demonstrates the problems of the aggregate analysis, and offers an alternative for individual institutions.     

Culture,Education and Britain's Industrial Crisis

The paper printed below is based upon a lecture given by Sir Geoffrey Chandler, former Director General of the National Economic Development Office. The lecture was delivered at a school based in‐service conference of the staff of Northgate High School, Ipswich on 23rd September, 1983. The conference venue was the Research Headquarters of British Telecom, Martdlesham, Suffolk and the conference organiser was Ray Dalton of Homerton College, Cambridge. The editors wish to record their thanks to Sir Geoffrey for his permission to publish the lecture in the Cambridge Journal of Education.     

Audit, Assessment and Academic Autonomy

The current preoccupation in British higher education with quality assessment, quality assurance and the monitoring of academic standards is traceable to a set of government policies which constitute an agenda for the radical overhaul of the ideals by which higher education has operated in Britain hitherto. Intent on overturning the collegial ethos of British higher education, and determined to replace the notion of a self-justifying and self-regulating academic community with a system in which universities operate primarily as pan of the national wealth-creating process, the Conservative government has used the quality debate to impose upon the universities a culture of compliance with norms of its own choosing. The net result of this process has been a deliberate undermining of academic autonomy.