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Too Old to Teach? The Effect of Age on College and University Professors

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Abstract

With the elimination of mandatory retirement, the average age of college and university faculty members has increased. While this has raised some concerns, relatively little research has tried to measure the impact of this aging on productivity inside the classroom. Using data from the RateMyProfessors.com website for a large sample of instructors in a broad cross-section of colleges and universities, we find that age does affect teaching effectiveness, at least as perceived by students. Age has a negative impact on student ratings of faculty members that is robust across genders, groups of academic disciplines and types of institutions. However, the effect does not begin until faculty members reach their mid-forties and does not seem to increase even when they reach the former retirement ages of 65 or 70. Moreover, the quantitative impact of age on student ratings is small and can be offset by other factors, especially the physical appearance of professors and how easy students consider them to be. When we restrict our sample to those professors deemed hot by student raters, the effect of age disappears completely. We conclude that ending mandatory retirement has had little impact on student perceptions of faculty quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business Administration, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, 29733, USA

    Robert J. Stonebraker & Gary S. Stone

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  1. Robert J. Stonebraker
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Correspondence to Robert J. Stonebraker.

Appendix

Appendix

Below is the list of colleges and universities sampled in the data:

Research Universities

Adelphia University

Baylor University

Boston University

Bowling Green University

Brown University

Case Western

Duke University

Florida State University

Harvard University

Hofstra University

Indiana University (Bloomington)

MIT

NYU

Northern Illinois University

Northwestern University

Pepperdine University

Portland State University

Princeton University

Purdue University

Rutgers University

Stanford University

Syracuse University

Texas Tech University

University of Maryland

University of Minnesota

University of South Carolina

Non-research schools

Abilene Christian

Albion College

Alfred University

Berea College

Bowdoin College

Bryant University

Colorado College

Concordia University (Portland)

Dickinson College

Geneva College

Hampden-Sydney College

Hardin-Simmons University

Hendrix College

Hope College

Ithaca College

Knox College

Lebanon Valley College

Lewis and Clark College

Macalester College

Mars Hill College

Mills College

Oberlin College

Olivet Nazarene College

Pacific Lutheran University

Reed College

Seattle Pacific University

Thiel College

Trinity College

University of West Georgia

Wartburg College

Washington and Lee

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Stonebraker, R.J., Stone, G.S. Too Old to Teach? The Effect of Age on College and University Professors. Res High Educ 56, 793–812 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9374-y

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