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Pensioning off the mandatory retirement age: implications for the higher education sector
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Abstract
This article considers the implications for higher education (HE) of the removal of the retirement age in 2011. It starts with an exploration of findings from empirical research which looked at the use of the retirement provisions of the 2006 Age Regulations in the UK HE sector. It highlights a number of concerns identified as a result of that research relating to retirement practices in HE and considers how these might apply given the recent abolition of a mandatory retirement age. The article uses a legal empirical approach to explore how the law would apply to any employer in HE attempting to justify continued use of mandatory retirement. It also examines other options such as the use of incentives to retire, the use of flexible working and the increased use of performance management. The article begins with an introduction to the main findings of the research, before turning to consider the current case-law relating to the legality of retirement provisions, including the recent Supreme Court decision in Seldon v Clarkson Wright and Jakes, and the legal implications of alternative options for managing extended working lives.
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References
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3. The range of aims which may be legitimate is narrower for direct age discrimination than for indirect discrimination, as confirmed in Seldon v Clarkson Wright and Jakes[2012] UKSC 16.
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7. This trend was already highlighted by the previous research.
8. It can be presumed that most of these reasons applied to academic staff.
9. These responses reflected to a certain extent the findings from the previous research.
10. The Universities Superannuation Scheme's (USS) rules were named by several institutions as being an obstacle to flexible retirement; however, its terms have recently been changed to allow for flexible retirement.
11. Note that the solicitor's practice, Clarkson Wright and Jakes, also argued that retirement helped maintain collegiality, suggesting little appetite in the legal sector for robust performance management techniques.
12. Thus, an early career researcher may not be viewed as underperforming if they do not produce numbers of high quality publications. However, it may be that academics who have been given much more time to produce high quality research outputs, and who still do not meet these targets, could be said to be underperforming.
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