"Is AI Making Faculty More Likely to Retire?"

I was interviewed today, and this is what I said (with fewer F-bombs)

I was interviewed today by a reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Education, who wanted to talk about whether or not AI was impacting faculty decisions to retire.

YES, I replied. OBVIOUSLY.

In what way? she inquired.

WHERE DO I START? I responded.

The faculty that I talk to can’t retire fast enough. AI isn’t the only reason, but it’s one of the top four.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

The top four being:

~Untenable conditions of work - ever increasing labor demands, with ever decreasing institutional support, at ever diminishing compensation (vis-a-vis the cost of living), under impossible productivity regimes that demonstrate zero understanding of the shape and timeline of faculty work.

~Institutional chaos and uncertainty, with lines, programs, departments and entire institutions literally shutting down, introducing precarity for even the tenure track and tenured, while a merry go round of upper administrators breeze in and out with 7 figure salaries and zero investment.

~The right wing political assault that is hell-bent on stripping faculty of any kind of autonomy, whether to employ the literal words and concepts of their scholarly fields, or have a say in the running of institutions.

~The near total embrace of AI by students to avoid reading and writing, by (some) faculty to avoid grading, and by administrators to sweep up faculty intellectual property for packaging and resale in service to their ultimate fever dream: profit centers that sell education without the need to pay actual human educators.

The thing about these four, of course, is that they are all part of one larger whole: a Christofascist effort to eradicate universities as centers of critical secular thought that might challenge right wing evangelical/oligarchic rule (and secondarily to render every human experience a transactional profit-generating exchange.)

AI is central to this project. AI is the transhumanists’ greatest weapon in their effort to dismantle democracy globally and install themselves as an untouchable technological royalty.

Photo by Nahrizul Kadri on Unsplash

The fate of regular folk, in this scenario, is of no consequence.

The sorrow that I expressed in my last post is for those who must still find a way to make a living under these conditions.

But for those lucky enough to be at the end of their careers? They are looking at the current hellscape, remembering how different it all was when they started (and I know, because I am this exact generation myself), grieving the loss, and signing those retirement papers.

Of course there is still the academic 1% - specific institutions, or specific departments and fields within institutions, or even just specific superstar faculty lines within departments. Those folks aren’t in any rush to leave. Their careers might be a little bruised here and there. Maybe deprived on an incoming graduate cohort this year or next, or some hoped for funding. But basically fine.

But the academic 99%? You know you work in a house of cards that could collapse at any minute. You never planned to retire at, say, 60… but now there is nothing to keep you - especially once you get your last grad student through.

I do hear of some who choose to stay on because they know the department will lose the tenure-line once they leave. They call it protecting the line. If this is selfless, or just selfishness in disguise, I’m honestly not sure.

In any case, the traditional allure of the faculty job rested in several elements: the freedom to pursue your original ideas wherever they may lead, the joy of teaching young minds eager to learn, the flexible and unsupervised rhythms of academic life, and of course, the job security of tenure. AI did not cause the loss of these; that was already well underway when AI came on the scene. But AI has accelerated them beyond measure.

I wasn’t this eloquent in the interview, and it included a lot more F-bombs. But the answer is: Yes. Yes, AI is making faculty a lot more likely to retire.