The Case Against Spousal Hires

In today’s First Person article, Joseph Kay, an English-department chairman writing under a pseudonym, argues for limiting spousal hires.

While there’s an upside to hiring both partners of a married couple in the same department — e.g., it may reduce turnover — the potential negatives vastly outnumber the positives, he writes.

Kay insists it’s unfair to a tenure candidate to have “two separate tenured people voting as one, especially if the candidate has managed somehow to offend one of the members of the couple.” It’s particularly problematic for “a small program to hire even one likeminded couple, when it means the couple would constitute an automatic faction,” he writes.

And what if the couples divorce? The presence of angry former spouses in the same department is a recipe for trouble, he writes.

Those who are already married to fellow academics should be upfront about needing an additional spousal hire, rather than waiting until an offer is made before raising the issue, he writes. And don’t expect departments to come up with two tenure-track positions. The “best a hiring department can usually do after making an offer is to give the candidate’s partner a one-year job, either as an instructor or as a visiting professor,” Kay writes.

There’s already a heated discussion about Kay’s article in The Chronicle forums.