How Do Faculty Select between Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution Retirement Plans? A Qualitative Investigation

Retirement benefits for faculty are an important, but relatively understudied, topic in postsecondary education. To date, there have been very few studies that have used qualitative research methods to examine how workers make financial decisions about retirement, and no qualitative investigations of faculty choice between DB and DC plans. To help fill this gap in the literature, we used a qualitative approach to focus on how faculty members at the University of Georgia made the decision between a defined benefit and a defined contribution plan. We relied on a semi-structured interview protocol to examine how their retirement plan decisions were shaped by factors that are typically not included in quantitative studies of retirement plan choice, such as their financial literacy, perceived quality of information about the retirement plan options, career mobility, and attitudes towards risk. Consequently, this study provides greater nuance to this choice process and more in-depth information about the factors considered in this decision for faculty.