University of Hawai'i faculty forecast looks gray

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

With a rising average age and limited new hires, the University of Hawai'i is starting to look more than a little gray around the edges.

	The age of Manoa
	Percentage of Manoa faculty eligible to retire:
•	Arts and Humanities: 25.4 percent
•	College of Business Administration: 19.6 percent
•	Education: 19.6 percent
•	Engineering: 20.4 percent
•	John A. Burns School of Medicine: 9.8 percent
•	Nursing: 1.8 percent
•	Social Work: 9.1 percent
•	Language, Linguistics and Literature: 21.1 percent
•	Natural Sciences: 28.8 percent
•	Social Sciences: 37 percent
•	College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources: 19.4 percent
•	Library: 16.7 percent
•	Outreach: 14.3 percent
•	School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology: 10.9 percent
•	Architecture: 15.4 percent
•	School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies: 15.6 percent
•	Law: 0
•	Travel Industry Management: 25 percent
•	Student Affairs: 7.7 percent

The average age of a Manoa faculty member is 49.9, which has increased each year since 1996 when it was around 48. Twenty percent or more of all professors at six of the colleges at Manoa are eligible to retire. And at some colleges, more than one-fourth of the faculty can retire at any time, although there is no way to predict if they will actually do so.

"It's a real problem. The vitality of the university is at stake," said Dean Smith, UH senior vice president and executive vice chancellor of the Manoa campus. "We have a number of faculty who are in their late 60s and early 70s. For us to do any meaningful hiring, given the static budget, means the older faculty will have to retire. And faculty retire when they want to."

The number of eligible retirees — those who have been at the university 25-30 years — hovers around 18 percent for the entire campus, far outpacing the 13.8 percent of community college professors or 10.3 percent of UH-Hilo and UH-West O'ahu professors eligible to retire, according to a study done last year for the UH Board of Regents.

Nancy Lewis, acting dean of the College of Social Sciences, where 37 percent of the faculty members are eligible to retire, said the problem is one of demographics.

"There was a spurt in hiring 30 years ago as universities expanded. Many people were hired right out of their doctoral programs, and they are all retiring now. It's happening at a lot of universities. It's exacerbated in our case by the budget cuts and the inability to hire and recruit."

No money available

Universities around the country have been trying to figure out how to cope with a graying faculty since a 1990s federal court ruling ended a common mandatory retirement system at age 70. A 1999 report of the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles showed that nearly a third of all full-time faculty members in the nation are 55 or older, compared with about one-quarter of them a decade before.

At Manoa, budget cuts have aggravated the issue.

Since the budget crisis started in the mid-1990s, UH has lost millions of dollars in state money. As professors left for other universities or retired, no one came in to replace them. About 13 percent of faculty positions — 370 — went unfilled during the last academic year because there was no money to pay people.

UH has not offered a retirement incentive program since 1995. And even then, it was a cost-cutting measure for the state. The university did not retain any of those savings to hire new professors, who earn significantly less than their older colleagues.

Smith said it would be good policy to offer another incentive package — but only if UH could keep the savings.

"If we offered another incentive package we would hope the university would be able to keep that money to use to hire in new people. It needs to be used to invest in a new, young vibrant faculty," he said. "We have to go into it with that attitude."

Lewis said many of those teaching in her college are full professors who have been at the university long enough to earn tenure.

"It's definitely of concern," Lewis said. "There are no easy answers to it. We should be hiring assistant and associate professors."

However, hiring isn't simple even when positions are open and financed. The pay scale and cost of living often scares people away from Hawai'i, she said.

"They're very concerned about the cost of living and the cost of housing and relocation costs," Lewis said. "There's also the isolation on a island away from their peers. You're also leaving your family behind. We're not able to find them as easily and we have more people turning us down."

Salary remains an issue

Although the average salary of a professor at a doctoral university was $83,207 in 1999, the latest year for which data is available, the average salary for full professors at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa was $78,300, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Chuck Hayes, interim dean of the College of Natural Sciences, where 28.8 percent of the faculty are eligible to retire, said he's more concerned about salaries than the age of his faculty members.

"In my opinion salary is one of the major issues facing the University of Hawai'i," he said. "We've had difficulty here. People are accepting jobs for more money on the Mainland. That's happened time and time again."

Ira Rohter, an associate professor of political science, said his department has about 15 faculty members compared with the 20 positions it had a few years ago, meaning that new people have not been hired to replace those who have left. The number of graduate assistants the department can hire has also been whittled down, he said.

"It's very difficult to attract very talented graduate students when you can't offer them a teaching position," he said. "We can't technically do that. We've been scrambling. It's the feeling that, oh my God, the place is sinking."

The political science department has one faculty member under the age of 40, he said.

"We've been revising our curriculum for the next five years and it becomes a joke," he said. "Who is going to be around to teach these classes?"

Not everyone has problems

The graying issue isn't causing concern among everyone on campus, though.

Roderick Jacobs, interim dean of the College of Language, Linguistics and Literature, where 21.1 percent of faculty members are eligible to retire, said he's not worried about the age of his faculty members.

His college has an international reputation for its languages program, making it easier to lure young faculty members than in some other colleges, even if their salaries are lower than at other institutions.

"Three years to five or six years back, it was an important concern. Now as they're leaving it's an exciting opportunity," he said. "We are restaffing. New blood is coming in and the students are responding very well."

Jennifer Hiller can be reached at 525-8084 or by e-mail at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.