Critical Issues in the Decision to Retire: A Comparison of Retired and Retirement-Age Faculty

The nursing faculty workforce is on the verge of a crisis because the number of full-time faculty expected to retire in the next 10 years is predicted to escalate dramatically. To propose evidence-based strategies to retain qualified nursing faculty beyond retirement age, this study built on previous qualitative research. An initial phenomenological study of retirement-age faculty identified 15 critical issues in the decision to remain employed in academia. To determine the degree to which these factors are shared by retired and still-employed faculty and the relative importance of each of these factors, a quasi-experimental comparative study was conducted. A Likert scale questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample drawn from a national population using the snowball sampling technique. ANOVA established the difference between retired and still-working faculty; discriminant analysis identified eight predictor variables for faculty decisions to remain in academia.