Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1920 [PAGE 235]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1919]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

231

1. A participation in the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association for men under forty. This is a simple matter and for the interest of the men involved should begin as soon as possible. 2. The working out of some plan for older men on as generous a basis as possible.

For some colleges we have solved this second plan in a satisfactory way by a compromise of this sort: the retiring allowance to be available at sixty-eight or seventy —instead of at sixty-five; the institution and the men to contribute in the interval five per cent of the salary of such individuals as elect to enter the plan and a moderate sum to be raised as a reserve to be used, principal and interest, in extinguishing the retiring allowances of older men under the plan adopted. Professor Rietz of your faculty is of course very familiar with all these matters and is most competent to advise you as to what plan would be feasible and desirable. I realize that in the state universities the ability to contribute stands upon a different basis from that of endowed institutions so far as the participation of the institution is concerned. Some of the institutions have proposed to ask for authority to pay the contribution out of current appropriations; some state institutions are proposing to raise a special endowment for this purpose, in view of the complications which may arise from state aid. It is believed to be one of the things to which the alumni might gladly contribute. Other solutions are proposed. I have just received the formal vote of the Regents of the University of Michigan. They estimate that their initial annual expense will be about 357,000 but they did not inform me what method they had adopted for making this payment. It goes without saying that I shall be only too pleased to be of any assistance in case you should decide to avail yourself of the facilities of the Insurance and Annuity Association; or if you decide to become associated with the Carnegie Foundation. I am sending you herewith a copy of the Rules of the Foundation as adopted in April last and as affected by the introduction of the contributory system. While the Founda" tion will not be able to solve the problem of the older men in institutions to be admitted in the future, it has a moderate reserve through which it may assist such institutions to a limited extent. Faithfully yours,

HENRY S. PRITCHETT

NEW YORK, February 5,1919 President Edmund J* James, University of Illinois

DEAR PRESIDENT JAMES:

In accordance with your messages I am having sent you under separate cover copies of the policies and of the charter of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. In launching this agency we found ourselves somewhat embarrassed by the fact that the law was framed to restrain insurance companies from doing something that