Career alternatives: A model for calculating financial costs and for making policy decisions

Most university faculty are tenured and are concentrated in the age range of 40 to 50 years of age. As a consequence of this age distribution there is little financial or academic flexibility: Salary costs are rapidly increasing at a time when real resources are declining, and there is little capacity to shift faculty resources from declining to emerging areas of specialization. One solution to these problems is to provide faculty with career alternative options which will shift from the future to the present some of the flexibility due to begin in the year 2000 when the present faculty start to retire. However, before career alternatives can become a viable solution it will be necessary first to define the concept and the procedures. The present paper provides a model which defines the terms and conditions required for calculating the financial costs and savings under various conditions and assumptions. This information is a prerequisite for institutional policy decisions and for determining whether faculty will find such offers attractive. The model is illustrated by calculations made on the 1985 age, tenure, and salary distributions of the Arts and Science faculty at Dalhousie University. Considerable financial and academic flexibility can be gained even with modest participation rates and substantial settlements.