Is EJRA legitimate and proportionate?

Is the EJRA a legitimate and proportionate means of achieving its goals? It has four goals. The EJRA is not a proportionate or legitimate means of achieving any of these four goals. 

EJRA ensures intergenerational fairness and career progression: FALSE

Senior positions are advertised globally, so the opportunity to ensure intergenerational fairness for Cambridge-based early career researchers is often outweighed by external applicants. Thus, even if the model underpinning the Penty Review Report was sound (which it is not, as it has been shown to be statistically flawed - see FAQs), the intergenerational fairness argument would not apply within the Cambridge University context but rather only on a global scale. EJRA therefore does not ensure intergenerational fairness or career progression for early or mid career researchers within Cambridge. 

The Penty report bizarrely recommends that EJRA should not apply to administrative positions, only to academic positions, which is next to impossible to defend in terms of fairness, intergenerational or otherwise. 

Additionally, EJRA disproportionately disadvantages women, whose research careers may be more likely to be interrupted by parental leave, resulting in a shorter career before reaching the retirement age. This is another way in which EJRA does not achieve fairness, intergenerational or otherwise. 

The Penty Report also recommends increasing the retirement age by two years, to age 69, but this will have negligible impact on increasing Assistant or Associate Professorship opportunities. For EJRA to be lawful, it has to be proportionate, yet Cambridge University forces about 30 Professors to retire each year, with neglible benefit for younger academics. EJRA cannot be defended as proportionate. 

Nor does EJRA result in an increase in the number of senior professorships. Indeed, the number of senior professorships at Cambridge shows a very sharp decline after EJRA was introduced into Cambridge. EJRA is not working. 

EJRA promotes Innovation and Knowledge Creation: FALSE

Hiring new faculty members can potentially stimulate innovation and knowledge creation, but it is not the case that senior professors are less able to innovate or create knowledge. In fact, there is lots of evidence that senior academics continue to innovate and create knowledge. For example, many senior academics are awarded international prizes for their ground breaking innovative research in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. Moreover, senior academics often generate significant funding, which is lost to the university when they are not allowed to continue applying for grants. 

EJRA enables effective succession planning: FALSE

Succession planning works best when we know when a senior academic is going to retire. If they announce that they plan to retire at a certain age, planning can take place in a measured way. However, in reality, because of EJRA, senior academics start to look to move to another university without an EJRA, in their late 50s or early 60s, and when they get an attractive job offer, offering them the opportunity to continue to be active in research for as long as they wish, they typically give very little notice and just leave. Succession planning would work far better without an EJRA causing an abrupt and unpredictable brain drain. 

In addition, the EJRA actually hinders the University's ability to attract senior external candidates, as the prospect of mandatory retirement within a few years often deters potential applicants. If a world class academic in the US age 50 could move to Cambridge but know that by 60 they may be on their last grant or last PhD student, or could move to UCL or Imperial, where they could continue to win grants and supervise PhD student for another 30 years, should they wish, why would they be attracted to come to Cambridge. 

Moreover, the EJRA impedes academic productivity well before retirement, as academics may be unable to supervise doctoral students or apply for grants at least five years prior to the retirement age due to the impending termination of their employment. 

Consequently, productive senior academics often seek employment elsewhere well before reaching the EJRA, resulting in a detrimental brain drain of highly sought-after and accomplished scholars from the University. 

EJRA preserves academic autonomy and freedom: FALSE

In fact, the EJRA undermines academic autonomy and freedom. Academic autonomy in many subjects requires grant funding and senior academics are barred from applying for grants from as early as 60 years old. Academic freedom is also about being able to continue to lead a research group and go into new areas of research, but being forced to stop research when a senior academic is at their prime does the opposite of preserve academic freedom. 

In sum, EJRA does not meet any of its 4 purported goals and so cannot be justified. The J in EJRA is the only way that it can be seen as legitimate and legal, and since it is hard to justify, it invites a legal challenge, which is a huge reputational risk to Cambridge. Oxford has already faced this in a series of Employment Tribunals, and has lost. If EJRA is illegal it should be abolished.