Efforts to Address the Aging Academic Workforce: Assessing Progress Through a Three-Stage Model of Institutional Change

Abstract

The aging of the academic workforce is becoming more relevant to policy discussions in higher education. Yet there has been no formal, large-scale analysis of institutional efforts to develop policies and programs for aging employees. We fielded a representative survey of human resource specialists at 187 colleges and universities across the United States and found that most institutions did not identify the aging workforce as a primary concern. Still, three out of every eight campuses had made some effort to implement age-targeted policies and programs; and these efforts were more likely to occur at institutions with a greater number of employees and with human resources staff who had training in issues related to an aging workforce.