Inside Higher Ed, Tough Times For Nest Eggs:
At a time when tenure track jobs are drying up and faculty pay is mostly stagnant, some fear the latest threat to the professoriate will actually be realized years from now. As budgets tighten in states across the country, a number of legislatures are re-evaluating the popular pension plans that have been a key benefit for faculty.
Pension cuts for future faculty have already been approved in Illinois, where recent legislation raised retirement ages and reduced the maximum payouts available to future program participants. …
Under Illinois’s former system, faculty members at all public institutions and other state workers could retire between the ages of 55 to 62 with full benefits, provided they had worked at least 8 to 10 years, depending on their age. The new law will raise the eligible age for full benefits to 67 with 10 years of service. … [B]enefits will be based on the average salary of the highest eight consecutive years, as opposed to four. The highest wage earners will be most impacted by a new pensionable salary cap, which will be placed at $106,800, the same as the current cap on Social Security. …
In New Jersey, college officials are similarly scrambling to figure out exactly how a recent change in pension benefits will affect them. Gov. Chris Christie signed into law a series of pension-cutting measures in late March, but a Rutgers University official said last week they’re still digesting the details. …
Unsurprisingly, the crippled economy in California has generated renewed debate about whether the state can sustain its three largest pension programs, which cover the University of California, California State University and the California Community College systems. …
Universities with defined contribution plans have also been reducing benefits. About 13 percent of colleges reduced contributions to retirement plans last year by at least 0.5 percentage points, an AAUP survey found. …
In the court of public opinion today, there’s precious little sympathy for those at the top of the salary pyramid in any industry, and academe is no exception. … More than 3,500 state workers [in Illinois] have annual pensions of more than $100,000, and the highest pension is $391,000 a year,
