| The number of postsecondary faculty who are eligible for retirement represents a significant percentage of the higher education faculty workforce. While faculty retirement patterns have not traditionally followed general workforce trends, the large number of faculty eligible for retirement over the next few years raises concerns of staffing shortages at institutions of higher education.; This study examined factors that influence the intent to retire of full-time faculty employed at four-year institutions. Specifically, this study focused on faculty responses to levels of satisfaction and opinions regarding financial, workload, and issues related to the institutional environment using the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:99) database. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the variables that contributed to the faculty member's intent to retire for all faculty in this study, and by gender.; The findings of this study revealed that faculty are somewhat or very satisfied with financial, workload, and satisfaction and opinion issues related to their institutional environment. Also, the findings revealed that two variables, the future number of years to retirement and the anticipated age the faculty member would most likely retire from all paid employment, were significant for all three regression models in this study. Other significant variables in the models included such variables as faculty opinion that undergraduate education had declined at their institution, number of dependents, and the time faculty spent in research activities. The findings also revealed that there are gender differences regarding the factors that influenced the faculty member's intent to retire. The variance in all three models was small, which indicated that there are other variables influencing a faculty member's intent to retire which is beyond the scope of this research and an important topic for future research. |
