Mandatory retirement: the case in favour
Jamie Paris argues that guaranteed employment for life skews the age balance of the professorate while enabling the exploitation of early- and mid-career scholars.
This article is part of our Prof v. Prof summer debate series, where academics take opposing viewpoints on hot topics in higher education. Read all the articles from the series here.
It is time for universities to make mandatory retirement a serious point of negotiations with faculty, because we are losing the balance of early-, mid-, and late-career scholars within our universities. The university system has limited funding and thus limited tenure track (TT) positions. When older academics refuse to retire, it prevents early career scholars, who tend to be more diverse, from entering the professorate. Scholars like me, who should be mid-career, find ourselves fighting for entry level positions as assistant professors well into our 40s. The system is unsustainable, and it is leading to the exploitation of underemployed academics who are entirely qualified to take on TT positions.
To put this in perspective, Statistics Canada reports that, as of 2021-22, only 0.4 percent of full-time academic positions were held by people below 30 years of age. As of 2024-25, StatCan data no longer break out the vanishingly small under-30 cohort, and only 14.5 per cent of full-time faculty members were under the age of 40 — compared to 25 per cent over the age of 60. Nearly half of that older cohort were over 65.
Even more starkly, in 2024-25, only 16 per cent of full professors were under the age of 50, while 23 per cent were over 65 and another 21 per cent were aged 60 to 64. As of 2024-25, the median age of a full-time faculty member was 51 years old.
In contrast, in 1971-72, when most universities had mandatory retirement programs, about 14 per cent of all full-time faculty in Canada were under 30 years of age, accounting for about 14 per cent of all hires, and the average age of a full-time faculty member was 38 years old.
Some of this demographic flip is good news. It reflects the fact that life expectancies are getting longer, that people are maintaining cognitive and physical health for longer, and that our system values academic elders. In practice, however, this means that early career scholars are pushed to take on postdoctoral research positions, sessional work, and/or non-TT teaching jobs, which are all jobs that exist as auxiliary support for those in TT research positions. Interestingly, the number of teaching jobs outside the tenure track continues to increase, resulting in a situation where, quite often, untenured early- and mid-career scholars are relegated to teaching larger first-year classes that make departments money, while established academics mostly teach smaller upper-year and graduate classes. Many young scholars leave academia entirely because they burn out doing sessional and frontline teaching work, and/or they realize there is simply no path to a TT job.
Read also: Mandatory Retirement: the case against
The ageing professorate has created an arms race in the hiring process. When I was leaving graduate school in 2015, many of my professors told me that you could get a good job in the humanities with one good article in a well-placed journal and solid letters of recommendation. After all, they told me, departments hire early-career scholars based on their projected potential as researchers. Scholars in my cohort now speak of needing four or five articles and/or a scholarly book to even get an interview, and some scholars are not getting their first TT position until they are well into their second book. If you are an adjunct or in a teaching-focused position, this level of productivity is unrealistic. There is nothing, moreover, to suggest that being a sessional teacher, even with wonderful teaching evaluations, leads to eventual TT employment.
Mandatory retirement within the university system is legal in Canada. The key case on this topic is McKinney v. University of Guelph, where, in 1990, the Supreme Court found that universities have a compelling interest in maintaining mandatory retirement because a university is a “closed system with limited resources.” Mandatory retirement is “intimately tied to the tenure system” because it “ensures continuing faculty renewal,” in a context of otherwise iron-clad job security, while allowing “long-term planning both by the university and the individual.” Mandatory retirement, moreover, “ensures [the] infusion of new people and ideas, a better mix of young and old that is a desirable feature of a teaching staff, and better access to the universities outstanding research facilities which are essential to push forward the frontiers of knowledge.”
I want to be clear that I deeply value my senior colleagues and that I think having departments members over 60 is a good thing. I just want a better mix of scholars over 60 and scholars in their 30s and 40s.
Furthermore, as the Supreme Court found in Dickason v. University of Alberta in 1992, “the objectives of mandatory retirement were stated to be the preservation of tenure, the promotion of academic renewal, the facilitation of planning and resource management and the protection of ‘retirement with dignity’ for faculty members.” I want here to underline the value of retirement with dignity. People should not be rushed out the door at 65, but I am not in favour of a system of lifetime appointments, as it allows people to stay on until they can no longer do the job.Sometimes this leads to unfortunate instances in classrooms, disputes with colleagues, or department chairs having to tell someone that they can no longer be trusted to do a job they love. These situations can be traumatic for professors and deeply uncomfortable for students, who are often the ones who witness and are forced to report these senior moments. After all,
In a world where it is possible to get hundreds of qualified applicants for a TT position in the humanities, we should be aware that the difference between those who land tenured positions and can go on to make almost $200,000 per year, and those teaching as adjuncts and living in poverty can come down to luck and happenstance. We are preserving a system of privilege by removing mandatory retirement, and the people who benefit from this system are not being completely transparent about the role of luck and privilege in their success.
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12 Comments
Very well-written and researched article. It presented data that clearly supports a demographic imbalance in the academic world.
Mandatory retirement wouldn’t fix every issue, as I think the author would also agree. However, it would be one tool that would contribute to a more equitable academic job situation.
There’s been a systematic under-funding of research and postsecondary teaching for decades which has largely caused the situation we are currently in. Resolving that issue would ultimately be the best long-term solution. However, given the job market pressures, the increasing workload for all academics (but especially the most precarious), and the (much needed) push for increased diversity, having a number of these limited seats filled by those over the age of retirement also contributes to these problems.
In light of a magical increase in funding (and the university’s will to appropriately distribute that funding), it’s not equitable to assume the junior scholars shoulder the majority of this burden while the senior scholars do not also have to make adjustments.
Professor Paris is incorrect that contractual mandatory retirement is legal in Canada. Provincial governments as well as the federal government amended human rights and labour legislation in 2006-08 to make it illegal to use age as a determinant of retirement. Indeed, the 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision that is referenced by Professor Paris make clear that it was up to legislators to eliminate mandatory retirement at age 65, which — as noted above — they did. Some provinces, but not Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, kept in place a rule that mandatory retirement can be imposed if employees have a bona fide pension plan. In provinces with this provision nearly all employers do not impose mandatory retirement.
In all jurisdictions and in all universities workers face dismissal if not able to do the job, regardless of age.
I agree with Professor Paris that an academy that is diverse is to be encouraged, including diverse in age. However, using retirement as a tool the select those who are to be employed, and those who are not is problematic. It was not long ago that women, for example, were denied employment because men were deemed (by employers and public policy) to be more worthy of having jobs.
Lastly, I find it disappointing that Professor Paris adopts an ageist discourse and examples such as invoking “senior moments”.
According to AI, the retirement age of 65 was introduced in Germany in 1889 by Otto von Bismarck and was adopted in 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt for Social Security benefits in the USA during the depression. Germany initially had set the age at 70, which was higher than the average life expectancy of worn-out manual labourers! The average life expectance of men in Canada today is 80 years and 84 for women. The standard age to start CPP and other pensions in Canada is a “Bismarckian” 65 but can start as early as 60 or as late as age 70. Forcing productive members of the academy to retire at some arbitrary age like 65 can result in a premature loss of experience, mentorship and talent. On the other hand, “worn-out” professors may choose to retire early if generous incentives can be offered as is the case at some universities. As a happy Professor emeritus, I remain active in the affairs of my department and university.
“2021-22, only 0.4 percent of full-time academic positions were held by people below 30 years of age”
“1971-72, when most universities had mandatory retirement programs, about 14 per cent of all full-time faculty in Canada were under 30 years of age”
0.4 vs 14% FULL time faculty?
So we need to increase the # of 20-something full time profs? Not sure that I see the value in having that # of young, inexperienced folk in tenured positions
While I appreciate the intent of this position, it doesn’t acknowledge the great disparity in ages at which faculty obtain tenured positions. It’s not unheard of for faculty to be over 40, even 50 years old, or older when they receive tenure (especially given funding cutbacks over the past decade or so. For these colleagues, requiring or otherwise encouraging them to leave in their 60s would leave many without a living wage, especially in large city areas. While I agree in principle that it is best to have a healthy span of ages in academic departments, it can be difficult to require this as a blanket practice without recognizing the economic impact this would have on newer, mature colleagues.
I read the first paragraph of the article as *calling attention* to faculty who are entering the career in their 40s. So I don’t believe the author would dispute a claim that by entering the profession “late” one loses out on wages, wage growth, and advancement possibilities.
What I take to be the author’s point is that in the current system there are fewer opportunities to entry across the board. And if the current system continues with little to no incentive for people to retire, and positions rarely open to be filled by people of any age, the individual problem of lost earnings over a lifetime will also persist.
There is a way to detach mandatory retirement from age, of course. Simply place a 35 year cap on faculty positions in Canada. If one starts at 30, they must retire at 65, if one starts at 50, they can stay on until 85. This is simply the length of tenure and has no relationship to age.
This legacy argument on both sides fails to unpack the ongoing racial and gender-based disparities that impact faculty members quite differently across their careers. These realities need to be factored in when discussing the impacts of retirement.
For example, Statistics Canada data indicate that 40.7% of earned PhDs were held by women as of 2021. Interestingly, when you break the data down further you find that only 33.6% of full professor positions are held by women whereas 66.4% are held by men. The fact that women hold 63% of full-time tenure-track faculty positions (versus 75% of males) is also important to consider in retirement readiness decisions as this may have implications for pensions and benefits, etc.
It is also noteworthy that there is a longstanding dearth of comprehensive, disaggregated data on the intersections of race and gender among the professoriate. This despite widespread acknowledgement of the ongoing challenges with academic advancement, particularly among women of colour and other racialized academics.
Simply put, this means that for women and racialized academics, they may not be accurately reflected in the currently available data on the aging professoriate. An intersectional analysis that considers a diversity of factors is something we need in order to fully appreciate the implications of retirement, whether by choice or by policy.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220901/dq220901b-eng.htm
The argument for mandatory retirement is simple: People who have had a great job for 35 to 45 years and have a fully funded pension should open up their position so that a young person can also have a great job. Age balance and the like are not the main issue. When universities refuse to replace a potential retiree, as they did in my case for some years, the argument becomes more complicated. That said, the principle is clear. And my university came around.
I was first appointed to a tenure track (TT) faculty position at University A at age 30. One year ago, I retired from a tenured (T) faculty position at University C at age 66. During this 36-year academic career, I served as a Department Chair, a Vice Dean, and a Dean at universities A, B, and C. Like Professor Paris, I am concerned by this rapid and on-going shifting of the age pyramid of TT and T university professors. In my opinion, ‘capping’ the maximum duration of one’s academic career (e.g. to 30, 35, or 40 years) or making use of performance-based – rather than age-/seniority-based – salary scales would be more productive and respectful options to mandatory – or not – retirement.
in fact the comparison between 2021-22 and 1971-72 is bad as it totally ignore the fact that 1971-72 was a time of high growth in universities with many professors hired without a phd at all or still trying to get it and they were thus more often in their late 20s. Since the 1980s-1990s universities do not grow, lack budgets and there is an overproduction of Phds; so the average age is higher and one rarely see someone with a Phd before its early or even mid 30s…
As is too often the case with this use of aggregate % about men and women and about assistant and Full professors %, they forget the elementary fact of demography: to show the equity one must look at recent % of assistant and compare it to recent % of phd in the same field. It is obvious that Full prof reflects trends 20 years ago thus the proportion of men is higher. This is no more the case for recent hiring at the level of assistant professor. The same elementary mistake is done when comparing global salaries without taking account of the composition of the population of professors.