"There's a symbiotic relationship between retired faculty and the university," Mr. Wheeler says. "The emeriti organization gives faculty a way to be involved in the university community and, at the same time, when emeriti do interesting things in the community it's good for the university's image."

The university also has financial reasons to maximize its connections to retired faculty members, he adds, to increase its chance of receiving donations from them in the future.

"If you don't give it to everyone it creates a lot of consternation that I'm not sure is worth it for anyone involved," he says.

But liberally awarding emeritus status can be a double-edged sword. An institution takes some of the credit when retired faculty members do something professionally impressive but also gets some of the responsibility when their actions bring the university negative publicity.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, emeritus status is automatically conferred on all retiring faculty, earning them, among other benefits, "full professorial library privileges."

In April, however, Chapel Hill administrators revoked one emeritus professor's access to e-mail, his faculty Web page, and the campus network, including access to online library resources, after they claimed he misused university resources in a personal dispute.

Elliot M. Cramer, a professor emeritus of psychology who retired in 1994, had been using a unc.edu e-mail address as the point of contact for a nonprofit organization he runs, the Friends of Orange County Animal Shelter, which has no affiliation with the university. He had also linked from his university Web site to a page detailing a conflict with a fellow animal-rights activist, Joseph Villarosa. After Mr. Villarosa complained repeatedly to the university's general counsel, Lesley C. Strohm, about Mr. Cramer's use of the university network, the university stripped his access. In an e-mail to Mr. Cramer, Holden Thorp, chancellor of the Chapel Hill campus, wrote that the professor had violated the university's policy on personal use when he "embroiled the university in ... personal issues and diverted university resources from the things we really need to focus on to a degree that is simply unacceptable. "

To the administration, Mr. Cramer's access had been a privilege, but to Mr. Cramer it was a reward for decades of service. He argues that as an emeritus faculty member, he was entitled to use the network for both personal and professional purposes and says that his lack of access will inhibit his scholarship going forward.

"I cannot access online journals at home, which interferes with my continued professional activities," he wrote in an e-mail. "I am outraged at the university's treatment of a retired professor."