The Madison College District Board members approved a voluntary retirement program Wednesday night, an effort of Madison Area Technical College to avoid layoffs and to restructure faculty.

The program offers $25,000 incentive payment to workers who volunteer to retire by the end of 2012.

“It’s a program basically developed in our efforts to meet the physical challenges tied to the college’s ability to manage our resources and reallocate resources,” said
Chuck McDowell, vice president for human resources at MATC.

He said that over the past year the college has been experiencing challenges with resource management, but there have been no layoffs so far.

He added that the program aims to provide 50 vacancies that may or may not be filled, and the college may or may not recruit new members to fill those vacancies.

Terry Webb, vice president for Learner Success at MATC said the only difference between the new program and the early retirement options that the college had been offering before is that applicants can now receive a lump sum payment of $25,000.

Webb said that the program was designed to make it possible for the college to allocate faculty to the courses that students are demanding the most.

According to McDowell, eligible applicants for the incentive include not only faculty members, but also administrative and support staff. It is required that applicants will not cause a liability in terms of incurring a retirement penalty to the college or related individuals.

“With the implementation of the program, we will be able to manage our resources and be better committed to the demands of students in the future, and we will do it in a way that is least disruptive to students and classes,” McDowell said.

Since board members approved the program on Wednesday night, McDowell said so far several inquiries have been received, but actual communication to employees will not be done until next Monday.

He said at this point MATC does not have an idea of the actual number of people interested in taking part in this program.

Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin expert on effects and politics of educational reform, said no similar large-scale program has been launched in the UW system before.

“There is no official [voluntary retirement] program that I know of. But there are many other universities that try to do this, often with incentives,” he said.

Apple said that benefits of this type of retirement program depend on whose perspectives people are looking into. In general, he said that major benefits include cost saving and more vacancies for younger people who want to work as professors.

Although such programs help with better resource management and more opportunities for the younger generation, Apple said that in certain cases they could be controversial.

“When you are asking people who have been in universities for 30 or 40 years to volunteer to retire, that does open up spaces for younger people,” he said. “But this can also be disrespectful to people who have spent their long-term career at the universities.”

Apple added that sometimes these programs might also mean sacrificing expertise and human resources.