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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE After 1905 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching rapidly became a general educational agency whose annual reports dealt in detail with many topics of current educational concern, not only with faculty pensions. Its numerous pronouncements and the standards which were applied in approving institutions for participation in its program made it something of a national accrediting agency. There was a continuing need for such an institution in American higher education and, at the same time, a need to find some long-term successor to Andrew Carnegie's effort of 1905, which was most adapted to helping professors nearing retirement or already retired. Clearly, something else was needed for younger faculty. After several years of trying, the foundation succeeded in 1918 in persuading the Carnegie Foundation of New York to join it in chartering (and initially funding) the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), whose purpose was to offer insurance and annuities for all employees of colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland. Since TIAA was organized to operate as an insurance company, to which premiums were paid on behalf of the insured, denominational or other affiliation of colleges and universities was considered to be no impediment in purchasing policies. Instead of entering into an arrangement with TIAA, the Gettysburg trustees elected to handle benefits for retired faculty in their own way, case by case, and payable from current funds. When George D. Stahley resigned in 1920, they named him to the newly created post of medical director, with an annual salary of $800, and elected him a professor emeritus, specifically without salary "on this account." A few months later, they belatedly awarded John A. Himes a $500 pension. Compared with this action, they were especially generous in 1924 with Philip M. Bikle and Edward S. Breidenbaugh, granting each of them a lifetime annual pension of $3,000. In January 1927, at the president's urging, the board adopted a plan which provided annual pensions of $1,200 to retiring professors with between fifteen and twenty years of service and $1,500 to those with more than twenty years. Until a special endowment fund could be created, these payments would also be made from current funds. President Hanson praised the plan as one which the College "could very economically carry," whereas one with TIAA or some other insurance company "would involve a real burden for the college." The plan included only professors, five of whom were benefiting from it in 1944-1945. However, when Clyde B. Stover retired in 1943, after forty-seven years as a teacher and administrator, during which time his highest rank was associate professor, the trustees made an exception in his case. They awarded him an annual pension of $1,200.59 45