STRS Ohio Alternative Retirement Plan

Who Gets the ARP Option

The Alternative Retirement Plan is available exclusively to full-time faculty and certain unclassified staff at Ohio's public universities and community colleges. When you are hired into an eligible position, you receive a one-time 120-day window to choose between STRS Ohio (the Defined Benefit, Combined, or Defined Contribution plans) and an ARP administered by a private vendor.

That 120-day election is irrevocable. Once it closes, you cannot switch. Faculty who let the window lapse default into STRS Ohio.

The approved ARP vendors include Corebridge (formerly AIG), Equitable, Fidelity, TIAA, and Voya. Each vendor manages your retirement contributions through their own investment platform, fund lineup, and fee structure. Your employer contributes on your behalf, and your own contributions flow into the vendor account instead of STRS Ohio.

The Mitigating Contribution You Might Not Know About

Here is the detail most ARP participants never learn until they start planning retirement: under Ohio Revised Code Section 3305.06, your employer must also remit a separate mitigating contribution of 2.91% of your salary directly to STRS Ohio, even though you elected the ARP.

This contribution offsets the unfunded liability your departure from the DB pool creates. It does not go into your ARP account, and it does not build any STRS Ohio benefit for you. It is a structural cost of the ARP election — your employer pays it, and neither you nor STRS Ohio retains it as a future benefit credit.

The practical consequence: ARP participants sometimes assume they have a small residual STRS Ohio balance from the mitigating contribution. They do not. Any STRS Ohio balance you hold came from service you performed before electing the ARP, or from a prior period of Ohio public employment where you contributed to STRS directly.

Residual STRS Ohio Accounts

Many higher education faculty spent years teaching in Ohio K-12 schools or at a different university before their current appointment. If you contributed to STRS Ohio during that earlier employment, those contributions remain in the system unless you withdrew them.

A residual STRS Ohio balance can be left in place, withdrawn (with tax consequences), or — if you accumulated enough service credit — combined with other Ohio public retirement system credit at retirement. The residual account does not earn the 2.2% DB multiplier unless you were in the DB plan during that service period, and it does not grow through investment returns the way your ARP account does.

Faculty approaching retirement should log into their STRS Ohio Online Personal Account to check whether a residual balance exists and how much service credit it represents. If you have five or more years of STRS credit, that may qualify you for a monthly pension once you also meet the applicable age and service requirements.

ARP Retirement Mechanics

Retiring from an ARP is structurally different from retiring from STRS Ohio. Your ARP vendor — not STRS Ohio — manages the distribution process. You can typically choose among lump-sum withdrawal, systematic payments, or purchasing an annuity through the vendor's platform.

STRS Ohio does not manage your ARP distributions. ARP service by itself does not qualify you for the STRS Ohio Health Care Program; a separate residual STRS Ohio DB or Combined Plan benefit may qualify if you meet the requirements for that benefit. This is a significant gap for faculty who retire before Medicare eligibility at age 65.

If you hold a residual STRS Ohio DB or Combined Plan balance, the service-credit threshold for health care depends on your retirement date. For retirements effective on or after Aug. 1, 2023, at least 20 years of total credit are required; for retirements effective Jan. 1, 2004, through July 1, 2023, at least 15 years are required. Before Jan. 1, 2004, there is no minimum for coverage, but 15 years are required for a subsidy. This situation is uncommon for ARP participants, since most elected the ARP early in their Ohio career and accumulated limited STRS service credit.

Phased Retirement and ARP Interactions

Several Ohio universities offer voluntary phased retirement programs that reduce a faculty member's FTE workload over one to three years before full retirement. If you are in the ARP, phased retirement adjustments affect your ARP contributions proportionally — lower FTE means lower salary, which means lower contributions flowing into your vendor account.

Unlike DB Plan members, ARP participants do not need to worry about phased retirement reducing their Final Average Salary calculation, because the ARP has no FAS. Your retirement income depends entirely on your account balance and how you choose to draw it down.

The STRS Ohio Retirement Guide covers how residual STRS Ohio balances interact with ARP distributions at retirement, including the service credit thresholds that could unlock health care eligibility for faculty who spent part of their career in the DB system.

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