While the law remains that employers need not give reasons for refusing requests to continue in employment past the default retirement age there is massive scope for favoritism and patronage. This is not to say that we should not celebrate when someone gets through the eye of the needle to obtain an extension; we must cheer. But for those who, despite years of hard work and good citizenship and with good academics reputations and substantial research grant awards, are shown the door, the secrecy can smack of cronyism, whether true or not. For one person to be told they are of importance and another not drives a wedge into the academic community. These days, for normal appointments there are strict rules to ensure fairness (anyone who has sat on an appointment panel will have been lectured to by the HR representative) but not so in the murky world of the academic retirement cull. It is probably down to some vague notion of cost, of the importance of the subject, of departmental support, of the power-base of the department in the university and so on and so forth.
But while we are kept in the dark ugly thoughts of patronage, of who you know, of deals done in pubs, of mutual back-scratching are bound to surface.
Ed
