This age-old issue is irrelevant

The need to replace staff who retire ("Job boom looms as older staff bow out", May ) may create increased opportunities for younger academics. But why this age discrimination?

The National Audit Office last year identified that a million people between 50 and normal retirement age are not in work but would like employment. The Government needs to get more people in this age cohort back to work because of the impending pensions crisis. Given the size of the higher education sector within the British economy, to play their part in meeting this national need, universities should be recruiting tens of thousands of extra staff aged over 50.

Your front-page story rightly points out that while leading universities have employed younger research staff on fixed contracts, other institutions such as former polytechnics have many older lecturers. Large numbers of ageing university teachers are burnt out, demotivated and eager to retire because of continually excessive workloads. Yet, at the same time, former researchers, including myself, have been priced out of the market and need to repair damaged and broken careers.

Too many younger graduates have studied subjects that, while popular with school-leavers, neither match the needs of the labour market nor offer the best prospects for major research discoveries. By contrast, declining numbers of graduates are being produced in disciplines such as engineering that are crucial to national prosperity.

If government policies to make university applicants respond to market forces succeed, more students will need to be taught these subjects.

Therefore it is vital that universities recruit older people with a useful career background, not just recently qualified postgraduates.

The irrelevance of chronological age for academic potential is evident from the many emeritus professors who produce world-class research into their seventies and eighties.

Frederic Stansfield
Canterbury