Universities Creating Retirement Incentives

Bloomberg - Darrell Fasching planned to keep teaching religious studies at the University of South Florida until he was offered a year’s salary of about $90,000 to retire and give up tenure rights earned over almost three decades at the school. Fasching, 66, took the cash and left the Tampa campus Dec. 21, joining hundreds of professors at flagship universities from Illinois to Nebraska and Texas who have been coaxed into retirement with offers of as much as two years of pay to reduce operating costs. Tenured teacher pay averages $117,000 a year at the top 200 U.S. public universities, according to figures from the Washington-based American Association of University Professors. Annual contracts for replacement instructors cost an average of $52,500, the group said an April report.

With the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities in Washington forecasting U.S. states will face fiscal 2012 deficits totaling $140 billion, “these buyouts will become more common,” said Roger Meiners, who teaches economics at the University of Texas at Arlington. “Most states have horrific budget problems and they haven’t dealt with the kinds of cuts in higher education that are going to be necessary,” he said in a telephone interview. Read full story here: 

Universities Creating Retirement Incentives