Washington, D.C.
October 18-20, 1995
MR. CROWE: I hope we have some questions from the floor and some comments. The questions that we have received regarding Stanley’s work from reviewers have stimulated our thinking about how these reports can support ARL programs across the board.
MR. NEAL (Johns Hopkins University): Stanley’s work is absolutely critical to workforce planning in our profession, of which there is little or none. I think there needs to be caution in the use of the ARL Statistics in terms of the definition of professionals, because I know many of the institutions do report in that category both individuals who have librarian credentials and those who do not. I sometimes am concerned that we are making projections on reported data that are not always consistent in reporting procedures.
Several years ago I did a series of studies on employee turnover in ARL libraries, looking at librarians, support staff, and student turnover patterns. In those mobility studies I showed that librarians have a remarkably low turnover rate, half that of what I found in peer, white collar type institutions. I also looked at where turnover was taking place, and clearly it was in entry level positions, primarily in reference positions.
The number of years of service was also of interest; what I documented was between 13 and 14 years as the median for individuals leaving a position. I also documented that there was a significant number, approximately eight percent, of turnovers during that late 1980s period, when people were leaving the profession to go into other fields. I believe it would be helpful to look at Stanley’s data not only in terms of projected retirements, but also in terms of whether individuals are looking at other professions before their retirement plans.
One final point as we embark on an expanded foreign acquisitions process with the AAU/ARL projects is that we need to be concerned about the number of ARL librarians who entered our libraries in the 1960s and early 1970s, because they saw in libraries an opportunity to use their subject language and professional expertise.
If we are going to be successful in our foreign acquisitions efforts, we must have people in our libraries to take their places. I am concerned that we are not preparing them and welcoming them into our libraries.
MR. WILDER: I can confirm that the subject specialist within ARL is one particularly old group.
Regarding professional librarians in the data, I want to mention that the data would have allowed me to completely eliminate people who don’t have an M.L.S. degree, but, as I looked at the data along various variables, there just wasn’t much difference in terms of age between people who have the M.L.S. and people who are considered professionals who don’t have the M.L.S, and so I left them in that way.
MR. INGLES (University of Alberta): First of all, just to comment about what may be a somewhat different demographic with regard to Canadians. My sense is that a lot of the Canadian libraries got into cutbacks a little earlier than our American colleagues, and in consequence we haven’t been hiring for a longer period of time. Perhaps that is what has caused the curve to push forward.
I was more interested, though, in the faculty trends, particularly those statistics and numbers that indicated those who were likely to retire at various age categories. One thing that is happening in Canada is that, as we increasingly come to more and more of a financial impasse, we are being very creative with our incentive packages and providing some very advantageous ones. At my own institution we have a package going at the moment which will allow a person at 55 to walk out the door with two full years of salary plus fringe benefits, which include Medicare and all the rest of it, until 65.
A normal retirement would have given us 53 percent of our professoriate retiring in the next ten years or so. We now have 40 percent of our professoriat already signed on the dotted line to retire, all of which are going to retire earlier.
I don’t know whether many institutions are doing the same thing, but when you compare that against the graduate trends, it appears that a crisis of hiring could occur much faster than even we are projecting. This crisis could be occurring in as soon as two or three years, as opposed to the seven to ten year projections. What is that going to mean to all of our institutions?
MR. CHRONISTER: There are several things that have come up there. The term that has been frequently used is “incentive retirement programs.” One of the things that we have run into with public institutions are state incentive retirement plans for all state employees, including faculty. That has hit some institutions pretty hard.
When NRC was studying what the impact might be, I surveyed 12 institutions for them. I spoke to one provost at a state institution who said that there was an incentive retirement plan that was geared to attract the interest of unproductive faculty, using low salary as a proxy for low productivity. They advertised their program, but before the window period that they had opened for people to enroll, the state came up with another program the faculty was eligible for, and the school lost.
That institution lost a lot of people. In fact, two or three departments were almost decimated, because it was foolish for the faculty members to turn down the opportunity.
Some institutions are looking at what incentives they can offer to retain the faculty they want, but I do think that we are running into the problem of replacing retirees in some disciplines, especially as the faculty that we hired in the growth years of the 1960s begins retiring.
Another way to look at this issue, although I am not sure if it will help solve the problem, is the upcoming report from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association/College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA/CREF), looking at this issue of faculty careers in a different way.
With increased health and longevity, the author of that report believes there will exist almost a second career period for people aged 50 to 75. That is hopefully going to have an impact on people staying longer, but as long as we provide incentive retirement plans, we will lose some of those people. I don’t have an answer to your question, but it is something that is being discussed.
With the abolition of mandatory retirement, when I retire as a tenured faculty member is up to me. It’s no longer up to the institution, and there is nothing in federal law to discourage me from continuing to work in terms of the pension I can attain. That may be why some of the 71- and 72-year-olds will leave a nice legacy.
MR. KOBULNICKY (University of Connecticut): In all this discussion of the costs and benefits of our retirements to our institutions, the whole argument of proper performance measurements gets lost. What we are doing is looking for demographic reasons to explain why things happen when we could be using good management techniques to, in fact, make them happen properly.
MR. CROWE: The training issues are all around us, as are development issues. Other questions?
MR. De GENNARO (Harvard University): Stanley, did you learn anything about library directors and their age?
MR. WILDER: Library directors aged considerably from 1990 to 1994. They are already substantially older than the ARL population, but that is only natural. We expect directors to have many years of experience, but I think that the change between 1990 and 1994 is really something to see. You can see it in the published report.
MR. CHRONISTER: The data that we have on retirement and the large number of retirements that are going to take place in faculty over the next ten to 15 years has real implications for you. Over the years I have interviewed many people planning to retire and those who are retiring, and gathered information on the possibility of a second career.
One of the things that many faculty members say when they retire, especially those from the research universities and doctoral universities, is that they want to maintain a tie with the institution. They want access to graduate students they mentor, they want faculty colleagues, and they want access to the library and computer centers.
If we get this large bulge of retirements that is going to take place over the next ten to 15 years, there will be a significant increase in the size of the consumer population you serve. We will replace most of those faculty members, but this is still a consideration.
MS. BAKER (Washington State University): I’m pleased that Patricia is here, and it really complements our program in the sense that, as we are increasingly diversifying our campuses, the quality of the community experience in which our campuses exist is very important.
My own community is becoming more diverse only because of university efforts. A major concern is what will happen when minority faculty comes with their families into a community that isn’t diverse at all. So I am encouraged to see that cities and towns are recognizing this primary issue.
MR. MEKKAWI (Howard University): I wonder if you have looked to see if there are any differentials in the marital status of the individuals that you have studied, either in the instruction or the library field, and if there are any differentials in levels of educational attainment in either.
Another factor that would be interesting to look into is the age of people entering the profession now compared to the entrance age of those who have been in the profession for a certain length of time.
MR. WILDER: I can’t do anything with the data that has to do with marital status, but I did look at educational attainment. I didn’t find anything unexpected; people with Ph.D.s are older than those without Ph.D.s, but, beyond that, there really weren’t substantial differences.
I might say, just getting back to a comment that Jay made earlier regarding public schools versus private ones and gender’s role, that both of those are segments that I eventually cut out of the document because, although in higher education literature there really is a difference between public and private in terms of age, that doesn’t hold for ARL librarians.
Because this is a female dominated profession, we are all concerned about gender, but there just is not any difference between men and women in terms of age. What that means is that women are not leaving ARL librarianship earlier than men.
MR. CHRONISTER: One thing in terms of the marital status and the health issues for faculty. For retirement plans, once income replacement reaches a satisfactory level, the next concern is the cost of medical insurance. But if a spouse has health problems and retirement draws me away from medical insurance or health care coverage provided while unemployed, I would probably stay on working.
MS. CLINE (Pennsylvania State University): You have all given us some very interesting things to reflect on as we continue our own strategic planning, but one of the things that struck me about your presentations is that we may have some real opportunities to think differently about our futures.
The cities’ perspective is that there is a real need for lifelong learning, and the retirees declare that it’s not only the age or the income point, but the association with a meaningful role that validates their purpose, so we can be creative in finding ways to use those skills, abilities, and expertise across what had been previously defined boundaries; volunteer actions, drawing them into special focused seminars, engaging them in some of the sort of acculturation education that may be needed to assimilate new communities. I would hope that we take some of this and energize some forces within our own institutions to look at it creatively.
MR. WILLIAMS (University of Colorado): My comments are directed to Patricia. I come from a state supported institution, and am really interested in the figure you gave us on how the people of Wausau had agreed to tax themselves to support their infrastructure.
The Census Bureau is telling us now that there were more personal home computers with telecommunications in them sold in 1995 than there were TV sets. More business is electronic commerce, and thereby there will be a loss of sales tax support for cities. Are mayors concerned about this loss of local sales tax?
MS. REICHLER: Yes, they are, and they have summits on issues just exactly around that point. The entire move to an information and, of course, electronic age is a major issue for the cities, as is the resulting impact on the educational abilities of the citizens, as related to tax and income.
In Wausau, many of the things that happened have been responses to a crisis, as opposed to a well-thought plan. The situation there was not anticipated. Their response was an effort to generate income to deal with some of the issues.
VOICE: When Stanley referred to 1967 as a peak year for entry into the profession, I heard lots of comparison at the table around me. Entering the profession or an ARL library is much different now from when we entered and there was a class of new librarians almost every year. It is probably much harder to get started now when there is such a smaller group.
MR. CROWE: Yes. As we bring this to a close, would you please join me in expressing thanks to Stanley, Jay, and Patricia for some stimulating information and presentations, as well as to once again express our pleasure, on behalf of all of ARL, on having our colleagues from SCONUL with us for this meeting.
Over the last several days we have had some very good program meetings as well as committee interactions, and some outstanding synergy and interaction among members. I urge you to keep up the energy and level of enthusiasm as you return to your own institutions, so that we can keep the agenda moving forward.
Thank you all. I declare our meeting to be closed.