how institutions can help academics at the late career stage

Julie Gould 00:09

Hello, and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould. This is the fourth episode of a series called The last few miles: planning for the late stage career in science.

One thing that can prepare people for upcoming career transitions is to be, well, prepared. To understand how you can plan to make the transition as smooth as possible.

There are several things to consider when planning for retirement; financial security, health insurance, if needed, living space, are you moving elsewhere? And what are you going to do with your time?

By far the most daunting thing to prepare is your financial situation. As you approach retirement with the definition that you’re no longer employed and receiving a regular income, your view of your financial situation will change.

Yet, even though it is daunting, often it’s also the most simple to prepare, because people who are employed by universities are eligible, not always, but most of the time, for pension schemes.

But this doesn’t mean that you can leave it until the last minute to think about it, says Shirley Tilghman, professor emerita and previous president of Princeton University in the US.

Shirley Tilghman 01:23

In terms of financial wellbeing, probably five years is too short. It is really advisable to start thinking about this even earlier than that, putting aside the maximum amount that you could put aside so that when you retire, you’re financially well off.

Julie Gould 01:44

Some universities offer as a benefit to financial employment, access to financial advisors.

Shirley Tilghman 01:50

That’s a very good thing. Because most of us, you know, don’t think about it from one year to the next until suddenly, we have to. And so having access to someone who can sort of lay out the landscape for you in advance is very important.

Julie Gould 02:07

So when you become employed at a university, it’s worth seeking out who these financial advisors are, and getting their input as soon as you can.

Carol Shoshkes Reiss, a professor emerita of viral immunology at the New York University in the US, made sure she was aware of how the university would help her to build her nest egg for retirement.

She worked with the financial advisors to help plan her financial budgets for retirement. And here, she tells me about how the New York University has supported her.

Carol Shoshkes Reiss 02:36

From the beginning of one’s employment, the university matches a certain percentage of one’s salary that you put in, and it is very important for people to be able to build this nest egg for their retirement.

And the university has arranged for group counselling sessions with TIAA [Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America] early in the beginning, and as you reach the end, and if you have a sufficient nest egg amount, and I don’t know what it is, you are assigned an individual wealth manager.

And I have my individual wealth manager, who has helped me determine what my level of risk is. And there are some people who want high risk/high payoff kinds of investments.

But then again, if there’s high risk, it can just evaporate, you know, with the bubbles. And there are other people who are more conservative financially, and I’m on the more conservative side, and so they help you balance your investments with different kinds of choices.

And they also discuss what you think your budget might be. And for me, it’s very hard to figure out what my budget’s going to be in five or 10 years because I don’t know what the price of milk is gonna be next year, let alone what all of these other things are going to cost in five or 10 years!

But based on my current needs and anticipated needs, we had a budget and we wanted to make certain that my investments would last for me to be able to support myself and not be at the mercy of my two cents.

Julie Gould 04:36

Not everyone uses the advisors at the university.

Inger Mewburn, the director of research and development at the Australian National University, has been working with an external accountant for many decades, mostly because she has income from other sources outside of her university work.

Inger Mewburn 04:51

I’ve thought about it financially a lot. Me and my accountant, we’re like this. And we’ve been talking, you know, for 20 years, and 20 years ago, I said to him when I sort of started really seriously paying my house off and stuff, I said, “Oh, you know, Paul, should I do anything else?”.

And he goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, you know, do do I buy shares? Like, what do I do with my money now that I actually earn money?”He goes, “Well, what’s your appetite for risk?’ I said, “zero”. He said, “Okay, well just pay your house off and come back and talk to me when you’ve done that”.

So I paid my house off, like, a year-and-a-half ago, two years ago now. So I went back to the accountant, and I said, “So Paul, I’d paid the house off”. And he said, “Oh, you’ve finished the assignment”.

I said, “Yes’, you know, because he’s been my accountant for 25 years. And I said, “Well, what do I do now?’ and he said, ‘Well, what’s your appetite for risk?”. I said, “it’s still zero.”

He said, tell me (he had a look at all the money I had, like how much my house is worth, what my superannuation is, I don’t know if you have that in the UK, but we pay a certain amount of our wage into a pension fund) and so he kind of looks at the money that I’ve got there, he does some projections, he gets his calculator out, and he’s like, you know, “What’s, what’s your assets? What, what about your car and this sort of stuff?”.

And I said, so, you know, “Can I retire at 60, Paul?” And he goes, “Yeah, you could retire before that if you want to, Inger”. And I was like, huh! It never occurred to me that I could retire before I was 64, I just thought like, I’d be like, pedal to the metal the whole time.

He said, “Well, you know, even in your late 50s, depends how lavish a lifestyle you want, but you could certainly survive in the style to which you’ve become accustomed”.

And that really then made me think, you know, okay, so in terms of preparing for retirement, that was really encouraging, I was like, “Well, I make money on the side”. So with my Thesis Whisperer enterprises, you know, sometimes it’s a substantial amount. So that actually encouraged me to do a bit more of that, maybe. I was working on a commercial product with the ANU. Like, they’ve encouraged me to work a bit harder on that, because maybe if I work more towards this retirement nest egg, then maybe I can retire earlier.

Julie Gould 06:54

For some scientists, it’s just not possible to access the traditional pension schemes.

Matan Shelomi is an associate professor of entomology at the National Taiwan University. Although originally a citizen of the United States, he moved to Taiwan for both the climate and the work.

Although he’s still in his 30s and a long way from retirement, he is aware that financial planning is important for him.

Matan Shelomi 07:16

Yeah, it’s definitely something I’ve put a lot of thought into. Part of the problem is because I work abroad, my income is all abroad. I’m not eligible for Social Security in the US. You know, whether it’ll exist in 30 years, who knows? But with the assumption that it would be available, it’s not going to be available for me.

Up until recently, income as a graduate student didn’t count as earned income. So it also didn’t count for social security, you couldn’t put it into an IRA [Individual Retirement Account]. So I can’t open an IRA, so that avenue is closed off for me.

So a lot of the traditional pathways for retirement for Americans, let’s say, are not available if you’re an American abroad. So I was screwed, in that sense. There’s nothing I can really do other than just hoard wealth, I should say, store it in the bank account or stock market and hope that it doesn’t collapse, because all the tax-advantaged systems for retirement are not available if you’re abroad.

Julie Gould 08:09

Another aspect to consider from a financial planning perspective, is if you’ve got to close down a laboratory, as Roberto Kolter, a professor emeritus from Harvard Medical School, had to do.

When it came to planning the closure of his lab and using the funds from grants, Roberto said he never had to worry at all.

Roberto Kolter 08:26

My department had fantastic support. So I never had to worry at all about final reports, etc. and dealing with the bureaucracy of the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and how to deal with the accountability of the funds.

That I think is important, because that’s something that I would not, I would not have been able to do on my own. And they really were very helpful, but they were, Harvard is, at least my department, is always very good about providing all that support.

Julie Gould 08:56

What was the job title of the people that handled all of that?

Roberto Kolter 08:59

Well, they were the people in the finance office. So I guess they’ll be grants administrators, they’re grants administrators, that’s what they do. That’s their specialty, and they know the forms that have to fill out, all the formalities, etc.

So it’s really good to have an institutional office that deals with grant management, because every time the bureaucracy grows and grows, and all the forms I had to fill out, etc. So that really is important. If you’re left to it, you could be lost in paperwork.

Julie Gould 09:30

That would be anyone’s nightmare, I’m sure. But once you’ve got your finances sorted, you can’t just sit back and relax. There are many other things you need to consider when planning for retirement. For some people, like Inger Mewburn, it’s thinking about what she’s going to do with her time and her house.

Inger Mewburn 09:47

I can’t imagine not blogging. I can’t imagine not writing. I can’t imagine not plotting, all the fun things I like to do. I can’t imagine not writing books. But I can certainly imagine not doing emails and work health and safety records and, and, and…

The other thing I have done is really started to think about my house so I was like, “Do I stay in this house? Do I get another house? Do I downsize, what do I do?”

I’ve got a 22-year-old who wants to move out because he wants cats. And I don’t like cats. And so he wants to go, this will eventually make him move out.

And so in this room, for instance, this is like an old bedroom. So I’m getting it extensively renovated this month, to put in bookshelves and make this into a really plush home office. Because my vision is this will be sort of my space when I retire.

And then when he moves out, I can take that sofa bed and put it in his room. And I’m getting his closet renovated, so I’ve got a summer closet and a winter closet. So I have, I like, I am preparing the nest. So it’s a good question, like I think I just need to prepare the sort of intellectual plan, and then I think I’ll be ready. I’ll probably walk in and quit the next day.

Julie Gould 10:56

Carol Shoshkes Reiss, who we heard from earlier in this episode, was part of the committee that helped set up the Work Life Office at New York University in 2017.

This office is a collection of people to help support employees at the university in a variety of ways, whether it be to help new faculty find the right schools and childcare for their children, or finding the right insurance needs for retiring faculty.

And as part of her work with the Work Life Office, Carol and her team created guidelines that they believe should be in place to support retiring academics.

Carol Shoshkes Reiss 11:26

We needed defined guidelines for faculty who are considering retirement, and the university needed to put together a package of information and programs to facilitate the transition from a full-time faculty to retired faculty.

Julie Gould 11:46

One thing they set up is a contract with a healthcare organization for health insurance, which has a specific contract setup for retiring and retired faculty and their family members.

Carol Shoshkes Reiss 11:56

And we wanted to have the university collect these in a webpage, and to have someone in the human resources office dedicated to the specifics of the needs, of the insurance needs, of the retiring faculty.

Julie Gould 12:19

Another support system that the Office of Work Life has set up is related to the social aspect of retirement.

Carol Shoshkes Reiss 12:25

There are book clubs, there is poetry sessions, yoga, and other guest lectures. These are some of the other things that are going on there, as well as they have some social things bringing people together over wine and cheese, which is always nice.

Julie Gould 12:44

So in most cases, financial planning is the easiest to do as many universities are well set up to help with this. And in some cases, universities can support retiring faculty with health insurance too.

But there are other areas that universities aren’t as well equipped to help with, says Roger Baldwin, a retired professor of higher adult and lifelong education and the current chairperson of a AROHE, The Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education.

Roger Baldwin 13:09

Higher education for a long time has been quite good at helping people prepare financially for retirement. But we haven’t done a particularly good job of helping people prepare for the psychological and social adjustments that come with retirement.

And that’s been one of the reasons why people have been reluctant to retire. Because, like I said earlier, they don’t know what they will be, what they will do, how they will identify themselves, what will give them meaning and value.

I think if we can do more to help people answer those questions that are so important to academics, they will feel more comfortable about retirement and actually be excited about the possibilities that they can pursue. We just need to be doing more in that area than we do right now.

Julie Gould 14:05

As we heard in the previous episode of this series, identity is something that many academics struggle with when it comes to transitioning through retirement.

Dame Athene Donald is experiencing this for the second time as she begins to step down from her position as Master of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

I asked her what sort of help she sought when it came to retirement.

Athene Donald 14:26

I’ve looked at a lot of websites, how to prepare for retirement in a generic sense, and well, maybe maybe early career people feel like this, I felt it was full of platitudes, really.

I didn’t feel what I saw on websites was particularly helpful. And I think it is possible, I mean, if you’re retiring from being a checkout person in Tescos, or if you’re retiring from, you know, a general clerical job or something, maybe, maybe you’ve always felt it was a job, rather than your life.

Whereas I think academics have probably a different attitude in many instances. I mean, I’m sure there are some that can’t wait to get out, but I think it would be less common.

And so, you know, it’s perhaps a fairly specific kind of support one needs rather than the generic, as I say, it just strikes me as platitude.

Julie Gould 15:22

And then I asked Athene what type of support she would have liked to have.

Athene Donald 15:26

What would I like? Well, I mean, not being told, think about taking up a new hobby. I mean, that just feels patronizing, and, you know, try and get more exercise and rest and, you know, things like that, which I don’t feel. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with them, but I don’t feel are particularly helpful.

Julie Gould 15:42

Stacey Gordon works in the Work Life Office at New York University, that Carol Shoshkes Reiss mentioned earlier. Stacey is a gerontologist and social worker and the program pirector of The Next Phase Adult Caregiving Ageing in Retirement.

Her main objective is to support academics like Athene on the non-financial parts of their retirement. Whether it be with helping them to work through questions about their identity, how to build a life post-academia, or to envision the retirement process.

Stacey Gordon 16:09

And in my role, I provide personalised retirement consultations to faculty members and administrators. And in these consultations, I learn about the psychosocial needs, and concerns of faculty members that are specifically non-financial related.

And then I take all of these needs that I have sort of, you know, compiled and learned of, and these needs and concerns inform the development of my programs.

So for example, I’ve developed a specialized toolkit and workshop called Envisioning Retirement.

And Envisioning Retirement serves as a guide to potential retirees to focus on different aspects of their career, and to learn how to use their current work to inform future choices.

Julie Gould 17:00

Supporting retiring scientists and academics is something that Stacey is passionate about, not only because this is a growing sector of the population, but also because even though we think that people at retirement age are mature and capable of making decisions, academics still have big adjustments to make during this transition.

Stacey Gordon 17:17

This is not an easy time for most academics and scientists, who’ve been laser focused on their field of research.

Certainly, for scientists in particular, who have focused on something, you know, minute, like, you know, something that looks minute to the rest of us but it’s really sort of a world unto itself. Certainly, it’s more complicated for people to sort of find their next phase that’s connected to their area of research that’s so laser focused.

But we provide support that really goes a long way in bolstering people to get through this time of transition and really come out, you know, standing at the end and with a really great plan for themselves.

Julie Gould 18:06

One of the first ways that Stacey helps people to prepare for retirement is to get them to think about ageing in a different way, by sharing research on the brain.

Stacey Gordon 18:15

The brain actually continues to grow new neurons and new neuronal pathways throughout life, which is a surprise to some and not a surprise to others.

I discuss the age-related positivity effect, which is researched by Reed and Carstensen. And the evidence in their study shows that on average, older people tend to focus more on positive information and emotions and apply a greater range of problem-solving strategies more flexibly across situations, as compared to how younger people apply problem-solving strategies.

So I also discuss Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory, which looks at the relatively high levels of social and emotional wellbeing that we see in older people, despite some of the very real losses associated with growing older.

I start with these facts on ageing, because I think it’s very important to begin with dispelling some of the negative age stereotypes that we are all exposed to, and have absorbed throughout our lifetime. And reflect on how these stereotypes and negative age attitudes which are really what ageism is all about, may hold us back from going full out in terms of retirement planning.

Julie Gould 19:50

To help people go through this transition to retirement, Stacey has put together a toolkit to help them analyze different aspects of their lives that they can bring forward into their new realities. And the first part of the toolkit is a retirement retrospective.

Stacey Gordon 20:04

Which has them reflecting on how they’ve seen other people retire in their lifetime. What resonates with them now about what they’ve seen, and how might this resonance help inform them of their own, give them some ideas about how they want to retire?

Julie Gould 20:24

The meat of the toolkit is finding purpose and meaning in retirement.

Stacey Gordon 20:28

I begin by outlining the stages of psychosocial development, Erik Erikson’s stages, and discuss, you know, sort of the theory of human development and particularly focus on generativity versus stagnation.

And I talk about generativity. I present the concept of generativity, which is our inherent need to define our life contributions and legacy in a way that extends beyond our lifecycle. In other words, it reflects our desire to give back to the next generation.

And encore careers and relationships often provide that sense of purpose and meaning that people are seeking, when they do retire from a position, an academic position.

I also find that one of the most important issues to consider is remaining relevant post retirement. I can’t, I can’t stress how much just that phrase ‘remaining relevant’ strikes a chord in, you know, the heart of an academic. And so we discuss what that means to people, and it’s different for everyone.

And then we also discuss how to define relevance. What does it mean to be relevant? And I use a framework that involves curiosity, being curious about yourself, about the world around you, about people of all ages, maintaining intergenerational relationships with colleagues, with students, with mentees.

And then using your own voice in retirement, finding something that relates to your work potentially, or is something totally different, but something that you’re passionate about. And learn all about it, and talk about it with others, become an expert in that area, whatever it is that you’re passionate about.

Julie Gould 22:28

And we will hear a great story in the sixth and final episode of The last few miles about a woman who rediscovered her passion for science when she retired from being a school science teacher in her 60s.

But before that, in episode five we will explore what happens to a laboratory when the lead scientist of the lab decides to retire. Thanks for listening, I’m Julie Gould.