Links for 2011-01-04

“Mandatory retirement in postsecondary educational institutions ended in 1994. In this paper, examination of retirements in 1993 (just before the end of this practice) and again 10 years later shows that by 2003, the age distribution of doctoral scientists and engineers working in postsecondary institutions had shifted, with a larger proportion being older than 56 years of age, compared with 1993. However, this is not solely due to changes in the propensity of the older age groups to retire.”

“For their research, Manuel F. Bagues and Natalia Zinovyeva, scholars at Universidad Carlos III and the Foundation for Applied Economics Research, respectively, examined 35,000 candidacies for associate and full professor positions, in which a total of 7,000 evaluators served on panels. They used measures of research productivity to adjust comparisons so that male and female candidates of roughly equal promise were being compared. The panels, not surprisingly, included some that were all male and others that had various degrees of female participation. While the analysis did not find an impact on associate professor panels, it found that for every additional woman on a seven-member panel reviewing a promotion or hire at the full professor level, the chances of success by a female candidate increased by 14 percent.”