Ohio colleges make national rankings CWRU, OSU, Oberlin score high marks

Oberlin College offered buyouts to faculty and staff.

(Jon Fobes, The Plain Dealer )

OBERLIN, Ohio - Oberlin College, in an effort to save several million dollars a year, has offered buyouts to 323 faculty and staff.

Buyout offers at colleges are rare but have become a way to encourage professors, whose positions are protected by tenure, to retire.

Oberlin offered the Voluntary Separation Incentive Plan to employees, including 100 faculty, in April. The college expects about 85 individuals to accept the offer, spokesman Scott Wargo said in an email.

The program goes into effect for staff on Dec. 31 and for faculty on June 30, 2017. Wargo said he did not know how many faculty accepted the offer.

"For individuals, the program will offer an opportunity for those who are considering retirement, but are uncertain whether they can do so financially," Wargo wrote. "For the college, the primary purpose of the VSIP is to expedite voluntary attrition with the goal of decreasing long-term operational costs."

The college expects to save between $2.75 million and $3.5 million per year, he said.

Employees had to be at least 52 and have at least 10 years of service. The age and service years had to total at least 75, Wargo wrote.

Those who accepted the offer will receive one year's salary and the college will waive health insurance premiums for the first year after retirement.

"The places I'm familiar with that have done it have found that it's really been a win-win," President Marvin Krislov told the Oberlin Review. "It's helped people retire in a way that preserves their dignity and gives them some extra money, and it helps the institution in that it allows for predictability."

Krislov told the Oberlin Review the college is not considering forced retirement or reduced wages and benefits.

The board of trustees agreed to slow the rate of tuition increase from 3.9 percent to 2.8 percent in the 2016 fiscal year, which will result in $2.1 million in reduced gross income, the Review said.

Annual tuition and fees total $50,636. Standard room and board costs are $13,630.

But last year, approximately 80 percent of Oberlin students received some form of financial aid, with an average grant of $32,000--a total of nearly $59 million, the college said.

A growing number of colleges are offering incentives to faculty and staff to encourage them to retire, according to a study on higher education retirement trends by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The number of people older than 65 teaching full time at American colleges and universities nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund. College professors, many who say they still enjoy teaching, are among the oldest Americans in the workforce.

Oberlin did remove a clause in the retirement agreement that had concerned faculty and staff. The clause had made it illegal for anyone who takes the severance to publicly criticize the college or other signees, according to the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram..

Faculty had raised concerns that that the adoption of a non-disparagement clause by an academic institution undermines principles of academic freedom and faculty governance.

Story has been changed to reflect 100 faculty received buyout offers.