The UC Regents recently improved the age factors in the University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP), a move that increases retirement benefits for faculty and staff. The amendments, approved Jan. 18, took effect Jan. 1, 2001.

The age factor is used to calculate the percentage of an employee's highest average three-year salary that the individual will receive from his or her UCRP pension after retiring. The age factor, multiplied by an employee's years of service, results in the percentage of monthly income to be provided in retirement.

"This improvement to our retirement plan is an important part of our efforts to reward faculty and staff for their years of service and to enhance UC's recruitment and retention of a high-quality workforce," said Judith W. Boyette, UC associate vice president for human resources and benefits.

The factors start at 1.1% at age 50, compared to 1.09% at age 50 under the old plan, and then increase in increments of .14 percentage points per year to 2.5% at age 60, remaining constant from then on. Under the old plan, someone retiring at age 60 and older had an age factor of 2.41%.

Overall, the new age factors will be between 1% and 20% higher than the previous factors, depending on retirement age. For example, the age factor for someone who retired at age 54 under the old plan was .0138; under the new plan, that age factor is .0166, an increase of 20.29%.

Lydia Oller, the head of UCLA Benefits in Campus Human Resources, said she does not foresee that the new changes will boost the number of employees retiring overall.

"We don't anticipate that these changes will be seen by our employees as a retirement incentive," Oller said. "Naturally, there's going to be a small blip in the number retiring at first because some employees have been postponing retirement in anticipation of these changes. But no one expects this is going to lead to a great exodus from campus."

In fact, by retiring later, current faculty and staff will benefit from age factors that progressively increase at older ages.

Improving the age factors is especially significant, officials noted, because UC is facing a particularly tight labor market in California as it replaces employees who leave the university and adds positions to keep up with projected student enrollment growth.