In the Dark

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

from Little Gidding, Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot.

The start of teaching for 2026/7 is approaching at an alarming rate. new and continuing students are registering and today we had a staff meeting in the Department of Physics about arrangements for the new term. This all made me think again about retirement.

About three years, while I was in Barcelona on sabbatical , I posted an item about looking forward to retirement. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

The fact of the matter is, though, that I can’t afford to retire yet. I have a mortgage to pay and I’ve only had five full years of pensionable service in the Irish system, so won’t get much of a pension. I have the frozen residue of my UK pension, of course, but that is subject to an actuarial reduction if I take the benefit before I’m 65, which is also the standard retirement age for academic staff in Ireland. I can’t be made to retire here until I’m 70, in fact, but I think I’ll be well beyond my best-before date by then and am not keen to overstay my welcome.

So it looks like I’ll have to stay until I’m 65 at the earliest. In fact I won’t be able to collect the State Pension (SPC) until I’m 66, so I’ll probably have to stay until then. That means that when I get back from sabbatical I will have four or five years left until I can retire.

Since I posted this I made a firm decision that I will retire as soon as I’m able, which should be in June 2028. Having sold my old house in Cardiff some time ago, I have paid off my Maynooth mortgage which makes the financial situation much simpler. I am now quite confident that I can afford to retire before I’m 66.

I know many academics don’t like the idea of retiring. I suppose that’s because they’re afraid they won’t know what to do with their time. I’ve never felt like that. I’ve always had plenty of outside interests, but now there’s another factor. As I alluded to in an earlier post, and contrary to all my expectations of three years ago, there is another person involved. That person, whose name I won’t reveal, graduated this summer from an unnamed university, and is just about to embark on a two-year Masters degree (in a subject not to be disclosed) in a location I won’t tell you about. He will be finishing that course in the summer 2028.

For the next two years things for us will be pretty much as they are now: not living together, but spending as much time in each other’s company as possible at weekends and holidays. That arrangement suits us both very well in the current circumstances but we have already started discussing plans beyond the two-year horizon. Some of these are not at all serious, but amusing to think about. Others would be fantastic if they turned out to be possible. We have the best part of two years to decide what to do. In any event, I find it exciting to be able to think seriously of retirement as a beginning as well as an end.

Now that I’m back home from campus after work, and have access to this blog once again, I thought I’d share a little ethical question with you.

Less than a year ago, while I was in Barcelona, I posted an item about looking forward to retirement. Here are two paragraphs from that piece:

The fact of the matter is, though, that I can’t afford to retire yet. I have a mortgage to pay and I’ve only had five full years of pensionable service in the Irish system, so won’t get much of a pension. I have the frozen residue of my UK pension, of course, but that is subject to an actuarial reduction if I take the benefit before I’m 65, which is also the standard retirement age for academic staff in Ireland. I can’t be made to retire here until I’m 70, in fact, but I think I’ll be well beyond my best-before date by then and am not keen to overstay my welcome.

So it looks like I’ll have to stay until I’m 65 at the earliest. In fact I won’t be able to collect the State Pension (SPC) until I’m 66, so I’ll probably have to stay another year. That means that when I get back from sabbatical I will have four or five years left until I can retire. I don’t know what I’ll be teaching when I return but I hope I get a chance to teach a few new modules before the end. In particular some cosmology or astrophysics would be particularly nice. All this is predicated on: (a) me living long enough; and (b) Physics at Maynooth not being closed down; neither of these is certain.

Since I posted this I have made a firm decision that I will retire as soon as I’m able, which should be in June 2028. This is partly because I recently had a health scare which, though it is now seemingly resolved, has persuaded me not to take (a) for granted. There are things I’d like to do before I pop my clogs and I won’t be able to do them while still in full-time employment. I’ve done some calculations and should be able to pay off my mortgage early, perhaps even by the end of this year.

Anyway, this led me to the following ethical question, to which different colleagues have had different responses.

A PhD in Ireland typically takes a minimum of 4 years. That means that if I were to take on a new PhD student next academic year (starting in September 2025) then less than three years would pass before I would retire. If a member of staff is less than 4 years from retirement should they decline all PhD supervision requests?

Opinions through the Comments Box please!

PS. My two current students will both have completed well before 2028.

PPS. Another question is who would take over the Open Journal of Astrophysics…