Another Kind of Nepotism

The topic of nepotism is a popular one in the Chronicle forums, and I’ve seen it discussed recently on some listservs I follow, possibly because the economy has more folks looking for joint appointments within family units. This got me thinking about another kind of familial favoritism that crops up at some smaller colleges: parent/child nepotism.

Sometimes faculty members have their own children enrolled in their classes. It’s only natural for faculty children to gravitate to their parents’ fields as majors. I know of several cases in which professors’ children have been turbo-powered versions of their parents, incredibly talented and well-prepared for their courses. In these cases, there have been no questions about rigor in classes that were taught by a parent. Unfortunately, I have known of other cases in which a faculty child’s grades in other courses were much lower than those assigned by their mom or dad. I have also heard some faculty children brag to their classmates that they didn’t have to do all of the assignments in their parents’ courses. I suspect that many of these brags were empty lies, but still there are cases in which there are suspicions galore that this has indeed happened.

Sometimes nepotism affects campus politics through the annual awards that are assigned to students: Faculty members may be eligible to vote for or against their own children for academic or leadership awards. One can imagine how complicated this can become.

The complications of student awards, however, pale in relation to the third area where this form of nepotism occurs: hiring. It’s easy for institutions to take on the appearance of a family business. I know of one institution that had trouble with its housekeeping staff because over half of its members were related by marriage or by blood and their family conflicts (including a nasty divorce) kept spilling over into their work. I know of another case in which a college president hired his child to lead an academic department and made it known that his child was going to take his place as president when he retired a few years down the road. I know of other cases, of course, where these types of hires went fabulously well, with the child being an unusually gifted leader or teacher.

What policies does your campus have about faculty-child nepotism? Do you know of cases where this has worked well or poorly?