The end of mandatory retirement and its implications for academic medicine

The prohibition against age-based mandatory retirement, codified in amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 1986, remains a concern in the academic medical community. A seven-year exemption covering tenured faculty expires at the end of 1993. The author reviews the legislative history of the ADEA and explores in detail the planning and management issues--and the available projections of likely faculty behavior in the future--concerning the banning of age-based mandatory retirement of higher education faculty, with special reference to the academic medical community. Although the major studies concerning the probable course of events after the seven-year exemption expires indicate that there will not be a cataclysmic effect on institutions of higher education, it is still not certain how tenured faculty will behave and how that will affect medical schools. The author cautions that the management acumen of institutional leaders will be taxed, and that medical school deans should realize this and begin the transition into the new era by improving systems for faculty evaluation and development, clarifying the financial guarantees of tenure, implementing space utilization reviews, and developing programs to make retirement attractive.