Rutgers Study Examines How Academic Retirement Affects Faculty Identity and Well-Being
A Rutgers study examining how tenured faculty around the world navigate the transition to retirement, which can disrupt long-established professional and social identities, sheds light on how they adapt to this change.
“A distinctive feature of academic retirement is that many professors continue to remain productive and engaged in scholarship for years after they are no longer on the payroll,” said the study’s author, Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Media Studies and former SC&I Interim Dean Dafna Lemish. “Several factors may explain why faculty members seek to delay retirement—love of work, personal finances, increased longevity, and threats retirement poses to personal and social identity. The latter is central to understanding various pathways of academic retirement.”
The study, “‘I Can Finally Focus on My Work’: Continuity Through Academic Retirement,” was published open access in the journal Global Perspectives in Communication. The goal of the research brief, Lemish said, was to explore how retirement affects university faculty members.
“This study offers illustrative and meaningful insights into how academic retirement may differ from retirement in other professions,” Lemish said. “In contrast to the expectation to completely disengage from work, for many interviewees ‘work’ is who they are and what brings purpose and joy to their lives.”
In the paper, Lemish argued that several factors set professors apart from other retired professionals. Most importantly, their sense of social identity and engagement is particularly vulnerable in retirement due to separation from institutional networks of colleagues, both on campus and through national and international conferences, travel, and research collaborations. In addition, the loss of a regular campus presence, access to professional resources, and the strong relationships developed over many years can contribute to feelings of isolation and shape the retirement experience.
Lemish collected the data in 2025 via Zoom interviews with 54 tenured university professors representing the disciplines of communication, media, information, marketing, and related areas such as political science, sociology, anthropology, and history, from 12 nations. Interviewees ranged in age from 63 to 88 at the time of the interviews and from 60 to 86 when they retired. About half of the interviewees had been employed in the United States, including at Rutgers University. More than half continued to be as productive after retirement as before while enjoying relief from teaching and committee work. About a quarter remained active in academic service activities, such as reviewing and mentoring rather than conducting new research. Others have transferred their academic skills and experience into other realms of life, such as community activism, creative writing, and volunteering. Only 10% made a conscious decision to disengage completely from academic life.
This distinctive feature of academic retirement, namely that many professors remain productive and engaged in scholarship for years after they retire, could benefit the universities they retired from, Lemish said. “They continue to represent and enhance their institution’s reputations as sources of new knowledge and through academic service. Institutions could benefit further by actively encouraging such engagement, and even facilitating it through continued access to facilities, technology, and even competitive research and travel funding.”
