Why do so many retirement-age scientists keep working?

From ScienceMag:

Most Ph.D. scientists in the United States stay in the labor force notably longer than the average person—into their late 60s and in some cases beyond—according to new data from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Often they retire, only to return to work later. The finding won’t surprise younger scientists trying to land faculty positions in departments heavy with older scientists. But by showing scientists often stay on because they want to preserve a professional identity, the findings point to the need for employers, such as universities, to develop and implement creative policies to help older scientists step aside without losing the sense of engagement they value.

The new peek into retirement patterns is based on responses from roughly 125,000 scientists and engineers ages 75 or younger to NSF’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients. For the latest iteration of the long-running survey, NSF added new questions about the decision to retire or keep working. The findings, released last month, showed 40% of U.S.-based respondents between 71 and 75 years old continued to be employed in some capacity; that’s roughly double the 19% figure for the general U.S. population. Among those still-working scientists, more than half had previously retired and returned to work, often part time.

Some went back to work because they wanted additional income and social connection, according to the survey; others were asked to return. But the most common reason cited was a desire to retain their professional identity. The findings make clear that many older professionals want to stay engaged with work, says Roger Baldwin, a professor emeritus of higher education at Michigan State University who has written about retirement in academia. “The old view of retirement is changing.”

The data don’t distinguish retirement patterns for scientists in academia from those in other sectors such as industry or government. But Donna Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who studies the academic workforce, suspects most of the older workers are academics.

Engineer Alison McCarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and chair of the National Postdoctoral Association’s postdoc council, agrees. “There’s a lot of older professors.” She can understand where they’re coming from. “They probably enjoy their jobs; they probably want to keep going.” But the phenomenon can be discouraging for younger researchers hoping for tenure-track jobs, she adds. She asks older scientists, “Can you just donate your time, maybe, if you are in a good spot [financially] so that there can be new, fresh ideas and more jobs for people?”

Ginther agrees that tenured professors holding onto their positions may prevent early-career researchers from finding jobs. But there’s no guarantee that an academic retiring will open up a new position, she adds. “Universities have been substituting non–tenure-track jobs for tenure-stream jobs for decades.”

When Carole Goldberg, now a distinguished research professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, became vice chancellor 14 years ago, she was amazed by how many faculty members who were eligible for a full pension hadn’t retired—especially given that many would have been better off financially if they had retired. She made it her mission to figure out what was holding people back and to devise strategies for meeting their needs. “I wanted to make it clear to people that retiring did not necessarily mean forgoing one’s desired professional activities,” she says. Instead, it “gave you the opportunity to cast off those that were less desired.”

Some academics, she found, didn’t want an “emeritus” title because they feared it would hinder their ability to get grants funded and receive speaking invitations. To remedy that, she asked the university to create a new “research professor” title for retired faculty who were still engaged with research. Goldberg’s office also began to host panel discussions with retired faculty, highlighting how they were taking advantage of what the university offered. Such outreach, along with other adjustments to how the university engaged with professors on the issue, led to a spike in retirements, she says. “It was pretty dramatic.”

Volunteering can be a source of fulfillment for those for whom it would be “shock to the system” to give up all work, says theoretical physicist Helen Quinn. When she retired in 2010, she transitioned to 2 years of full-time volunteer work chairing a report on K-12 science education for the National Academy of Sciences. Since then, the professor emeritus at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has continued to volunteer as a science education research and policy adviser. It was “a way to continue my work as a scientist, thinking about how science should be taught and learned,” she says.

Baldwin did something similar for his own retirement, taking volunteer positions as the president of the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education and on the board of trustees at his undergraduate institution. The continued access to professional activities has been key, he says. “I do feel a sense of continuing purpose and engagement.”

“People are living longer and healthier lives,” he adds, “and we as a society need to come to grips with the fact that retirement is not necessarily a period of leisure anymore.”

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