For better health post-retirement, academics should take up a hobby

Retirement isn’t quite what it used to be. The days of the golden carriage clock and, more importantly, the golden pension are over.

This is because over the past century the age profile of most post-industrial countries has morphed from a triangle (many more young than old people) to a rectangle (roughly equal distribution of different ages). Indeed Japan is moving towards an inverted trapezium, with more old than young people.

These changes raise a number of issues relating to housing, health and social care. They also raise questions about appropriate retirement ages.

In the UK’s higher education sector, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge both have an employer-justified retirement age (EJRA) policy that compels retirement at the age of 69, while St Andrews compels it a year earlier –although these policies have caused an ongoing and heated debate, including legal action.

Balancing the needs of the individual and the community isn’t easy. Particularly pertinent is the risk of academic bed-blocking when there are tight (and, in many cases, shrinking) caps on head counts and worries about limited resources being focused in larger, more established labs.

This is before you get into debates about when in their career academics have the most impact. In his 1940 essay A Mathematician’s Apology, G. H. Hardy famously argued that “mathematics is a young man’s game”, and that no “major mathematical advance has been initiated by a man past fifty”. Few would endorse compulsory retirement at 50, but for most people an eventual drop-off in performance seems inevitable.

I am almost exactly mid-career. I have done 25 years in research and have roughly 20 more to go until I reach state pension age. I think this allows me to take a neutral position, appreciating the need both for new talent and older heads. It is also relevant that entering the second half of my life has triggered an investigative odyssey into my possible cause of death and what I might do to delay it – chronicled in my new book, Live Forever? A Curious Scientist’s Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death.

My investigations confirmed a lot of what I already knew: don’t drink, don’t smoke, eat well and exercise. But one intriguing aspect was the importance of social connectivity and the adverse effect of isolation. A study from the US Surgeon General put the impact of isolation as being equivalent to 15 cigarettes a day.

Therefore, one consideration for the retirement discussion needs to be the impact on the individual of isolation after retirement. That is particularly true for academics since, as a career, academia can be fairly all-encompassing, with much of our identity tied up in our jobs.

It can be difficult to contemplate being unable to continue researching a problem that you have spent your whole life trying to unravel. And that loss of position can come with a loss of respect: you might be the world’s expert on complexities of T cells, but to the outside world you look like just any other pensioner.

No longer having students to work with, learn from and (occasionally) inspire can also be hard to come to terms with. A research group can feel like a family, separation from which can provoke something like the empty-nest syndrome experienced by parents with university-bound offspring.

Due to the interplay of psychology and physical health, this identity-loss trauma can have physiological consequences.

I had some early personal experience of identity loss. I was a reserve soldier until I turned 30, and it defined much of how I saw myself, making me reluctant to let go. In reality, the anticipation of identity loss was worse than the reality, and I replaced being a soldier with being a father. But some retiring academics might struggle to find another all-consuming identity so readily.  

As well as staying connected with former colleagues, there are other things that can be done to reduce the impact, however. The most obvious is emeritus status, allowing universities to utilise retired academics’ pool of wisdom and experience while keeping them involved in the social and academic life of their department. But we could go further.

A large engineering consulting firm has begun recruiting retired engineers to advise on ongoing projects and to mentor junior partners. Universities could do something similar, enlisting retired academics to read current researchers’ grant submissions and papers, advising on their structure and how to play the academic game.

A second option for those approaching the academic endgame is to take up hobbies, so that academia isn’t all-consuming. For instance, writing popular science books may not seem the most restful activity, but it complements my academic life and has opened up other communities that I hope to remain part of when my academic career ends. But other hobbies are available. Two of my emeritus colleagues both sail, and this also seems an extraordinarily good way to head into the sunset.

Ultimately, questions about retirement reflect a more complex conversation about how society integrates senior citizens in a way that is supportive, extends health and doesn’t cost the earth. Finding ways to keep people connected for as long as possible seems an easy win. If this means making seminars more accessible, it seems the least that can be done.

Retirement can seem a way off, but it will catch us all up sooner or later. Therefore, everyone will benefit from finding approaches that keep the connectivity and curiosity of academia for all ages, both allowing fresh growth and retaining the towering oaks.

John Tregoning is professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London. Live Forever? A Curious Scientist’s Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death is published by Oneworld.