Currently, higher education is being roiled by class-action lawsuits filed against high-profile institutions, including MIT, Yale and New York University, over management of their retirement plans. As the lawyers are deployed and the billable hours accrue, it is timely to examine how those who have responsibility for retirement plan…

There's not a school business official in the country who isn't dealing with budget cuts and trying to do more with less. This article shares some proven strategies to help school districts reduce spending and address personnel issues associated with retirement plans. Because public education employers are exempt from the Employee Retirement…

On August 17, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Pension Protection Act (PL 109-280). The 907-page federal law has been referred to as the most comprehensive reform of the nation's pension law since the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 (Lucas, 2008). This paper will examine the major…

Uses question-and-answer format to discuss whether employer contributions to 403(b)(7) custodial mutual-fund accounts subject employer to the reporting and disclosure requirements of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Also discusses the self-correction of excess contributions to a 403(b) program per the Internal…

Provisions of employer-financed retirement plans have been changed to reflect statutory requirements of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and other laws. The author discusses the vesting provisions of two types of plans--defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution plans. Future revisions, due to the 1986 Tax Reform Act, are…

Summarizes a report noting that although federal regulations require that summary plan descriptions (SPDs) of pensions must be written at low readability levels, both the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) regulating such plans and a mandatory statement for inclusion in SPDs are written at an exceptionally difficult college level.…

Pension plan officials may invest on the basis of perceived social benefits provided they have examined a broad range of investments and have found selections having those socially desirable features among a broad class of otherwise suitable and equally desirable investment opportunities meeting the economic objectives of the plan. (Author/IRT)

Important considerations for institutions wanting to establish supplementary early retirement benefits to encourage the practice are outlined. Regulations concerning pension plans, tax-sheltered annuities, and deferred compensation are reviewed. Individually negotiated early retirement supplements are not recommended. (MSE)

Following the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the increased regulatory burden placed on defined benefit pension plans, the less complex fully funded defined contribution plan emerged as a more attractive and increasingly popular alternative. Traditionally the standard approach to pensions in the educational…

Older women, who comprise two-thirds of the retired U.S. population, share substantially less of the $1.3 trillion worth of over 800,000 private and public pension plans by every way of measurement. Of the one-in-five women receiving pension income, some obtain it from their own paid work history, while others are widows and divorced women who…

Employee ownership through employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) was first mentioned in federal legislation in the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973. Since then, at least 19 pieces of federal legislation have been enacted that deal with employee ownership in some way, including the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and tax…