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[ucprof]

Regular joe - indeed this happens all the time (the divorce).  I see two things happening in my field.  There are departments who will hire a "trailing spouse" into a position they would never hire that person into were they not the trailing spouse, in order to get "big named prof".  And there are departments that will not do this.  There seems to be a culture one way or the other.  I've seen the trailing spouse phenomenon happen with both women and men as the trailer and I am in a field that is very male dominated.  In fact I am aware of quite a number of "trailing" men - perhaps because we have been interested at times to hire the women but not so much their spouses.  What can happen is that there can be resentment from other faculty who feel that the trailing spouse is getting special treatment they are not given. This can be really bad for morale if e.g. a spouse gets tenure and they are doing work that is below the level of someone who is a singleton and having a hard time getting tenure.  One could even see it as grounds for a lawsuit if there was a double standard for advancement.   And of course in the case of a divorce it can be a disaster.  I'm in a department where we typically would not hire someone, regardless of spouse situation, unless they were qualified for the position on their own.  We've had divorces in the dept but that just leaves us with two individuals who each were already hired on their own merits.  We don't have many academic couples and we miss out on a number of them because we don't make exceptions for spousal hires at the ladder faculty level.  Personally I find it a bit awkward to have spouses in the same department because there are additional issues that come up whenever you have personnel cases and evaluations.  Furthermore, if the spouses are people who are not that socially outgoing they can isolate themselves more by being together as a couple in the department rather than functioning as individuals (e.g. they always go to lunch together rather than splitting up and getting to know the rest of the faculty).  That said, we've hired some really great couples in my department and also some great ttrack/adjunct pairs where the adjunct spouse wants to focus on some aspect of teaching and contributes significantly to the department.

Drpud - Good for you for encouraging them to meet people outside the lab.  I am married to a nonacademic spouse and I find it very refreshing to come home every day and talk to someone who is in a completely different profession with different pressures and issues.  It is a very broadening experience.  Perhaps too broadening because when I am at school talking to my colleagues over lunch it often becomes quickly apparent how little some of them know about the "real world" to the point where they have ideas and assumptions that are just wrong.  The ivory tower of academe.

[goxewu]

Just asking:

Do spousal hires violate any laws/regulations about public notice of job openings and open searches regarding them? For example, if there's somebody the chemistry department wants to hire, and the candidate's spouse who's in, say, anthropology, gets a job in the anthropology department as a "spousal hire," what about all the potential candidates--some of them probably better than the spouse--who were deprived of a chance to apply for that job?

What about universities with health insurance, etc., benefits for same-sex domestic partners, but in states with no legal gay marriage: are those domestic partners eligible for spousal hires?

What about opposite-sex domestic partners who aren't married to the person getting the job: are they eligible for "spousal hires"?

From my experience, "spousal hires" are pretty rare in the business world, with the exceptions being mostly at the top end of management recruitment. What is it about academe that makes "If you want me, you have to give a job to my spouse" so acceptable?

[macaroon]

Drpud - Good for you for encouraging them to meet people outside the lab. 

... I think you mean me?

What, specifically, I am doing is asking them if they have anything "fun" planned for the weekend.  When they come and complain about something moderately like burnout, I suggest a hobby rather than more time at the bench.  This is contrary to the advising I received.  The key to success when I was in grad school was to spend every weekend in the lab, and spending 16 hours a day at the bench.  Hey - I still often run into them there on the weekend.  I'll go in for a few hours myself, but I'm sure to say, "I'm here for about 3 hours, THEN I AM GOING HIKING."  I've also tried to encourage a culture where we take care of one another's experiments on the weekend.

I think advisors have a hand in creating two-body problems by discouraging their students from EVER leaving the building.  Personally, I think creating a two-body problem is way worse for a grad student's career than having them take 6 months longer in grad school.  

[ucprof]

My apologies.  Yes macaroon. I meant you.  If people marry other professionals they will have two body problems regardless of whether the two bodies are academic bodies or other.  It's just that some careers are more portable than others.  I would still like to give a plug for a non-academic spouse if only for broadening reasons. 

@goxewu I would certainly worry about equity in hiring with spousal hires.  We try to hire the best people regardless of marital status, gender, race etc.  I think a dept sets themselves up for both legal and morale problems if they do otherwise.  Where I see it work is when both spouses are highly qualified compared to other applicants - sometimes the two job hire nets you a couple, each of whom is better than the average faculty member in your dept - and each of whom might have likely gotten a job at a higher level place were they looking for jobs without the spouse in tow.  Or perhaps one of them is higher than the average and the other is comparable to others.  I also know of a situation with same-sex partners where they both got jobs at the same university.  One of the partners got tenure track and the other is not a prof nor were they looking for that kind of job, even without the partner in the picture.  We have several faculty in my dept who are in same-sex relationships.  As far as I know they all have partners who are working outside of academe.  However the location afforded them some good job options for the partner.  This was also the case for my spouse who is opposite sex from me (the location brought him several job offers).

Regarding non-married partners in general - I've seen candidates do some really bold things.  One candidate got an offer from us and sprung on us at the last minute that they had an SO that wanted a job.  This was not a domestic partner situation, nor a spouse.  Simply someone they were dating.  The SO job turned out the be the straw that sent them packing to another university.  We decided to draw the line and did not make an effort to find a job for the SO - not to mention that the SO was not even in our own field.  Apparently the SO got upset and said let's go somewhere else.  And they did.  I still think we did the right thing.  One has to draw lines when the situation does not seem appropriate.  In this particular case it was an opposite sex partnership, but regardless of that I think we did the right thing.

[ruralguy]

I agree, I would bring it up at least at the interview stage, unless you are happy with spouse adjuncting, or going up for a tenure track spot in 2 years, etc.

Bringing it UP at ANY point can lead to not getting the offer ultimately, so I wouldn't worry about that, if what you really want is a dual tenure track offer.  If you want the whole thing for both of you, bring it up early.

[mouseman]

In humanities the situation is likely different, since it is tuition that is the main generator of revenue, and the big courses that are big money generators are rarely, if ever, taught by any TT or tenured faculty.  So spending twice the money to retain even a substantially better faculty member may not make sense.

At regional teaching schools like mine, all the TT and tenured History faculty teach the survey classes that generate revenue. Of our 4 courses each term, 3 are gen ed surveys. That's true of every TT and tenured person in our department.

Thanks for the correction.

But the university administration sees little reason to work toward faculty retention. If one highly talented historian leaves, they can pick up another extremely qualified one at the AHA. We are but interchangeable parts in a teaching machine.

The reason that they don't care about retention is possibly because class enrollment does not depend on who is teaching the class, or on how good or experienced a teacher she or he is, so the school would pay more for adding a spousal line than for running a new search every few years.  Of course, retention can help departmental moral and productivity, but those are not issues that interest the powers-be in most cases...

[larryc]

Erzuliefeda is exactly right but does not go far enough. At the regional state schools where so many of us work, losing a senior historian is a boon to the administration. They can replace the person with someone straight out of grad school and pocket the salary difference. Or, as happened when I left my last position, replace the person with some adjuncts and pocket almost the whole sum, putting it towards hiring another assistant football coach or something important.

[erzuliefreda]

I agree, LarryC. There is some discussion at my school over where such "freed" monies are to be "swept," but they never come back to our department.

For all of these reasons, faculty retention is a nonstarter for us. This affects not only spousal concerns for many, but also class scheduling, implementation of budget cuts, longstanding refusal to match offers from other universities even for folks who have been here for a few years, etc.

This may all sound bleak, but I think it is useful for folks to read now that MLA/AHA season is at hand. When my Chair refused to budge on salary or to "negotiate" anything, I thought I was doing it wrong. It really is the current policy to have a set dollar amount for salary, and none of my peers managed to negotiate anything either--no moving expenses, no startup money, no additional course releases. So as folks prepare for interviews, looking into things for yourself, poking around in online class schedules to see how many classes even the senior folks teach and how many students sign up for them, for instance, can help you have a sense of the type of situation you might be considering.

In any case, best of luck to everyone on the market this year.

[mouseman]

Actually, reading Larry's and Erzuliefreda's posts, I would think that long-term retention would be especially good for departments in these cases, because once a faculty member leaves, the department is likely to lose the line altogether.  On the other hand, a department will only rarely have the wherewithal to set up a dual hire without help from the Dean, at very least.

[madhatter]

Erzuliefeda is exactly right but does not go far enough. At the regional state schools where so many of us work, losing a senior historian is a boon to the administration. They can replace the person with someone straight out of grad school and pocket the salary difference. Or, as happened when I left my last position, replace the person with some adjuncts and pocket almost the whole sum, putting it towards hiring another assistant football coach or something important.

What is this "pocketing" you speak of? In the world of ever-shrinking budgets, that's money that goes right into averting some small percentage of cuts.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Erzuliefeda is exactly right but does not go far enough. At the regional state schools where so many of us work, losing a senior historian is a boon to the administration. They can replace the person with someone straight out of grad school and pocket the salary difference. Or, as happened when I left my last position, replace the person with some adjuncts and pocket almost the whole sum, putting it towards hiring another assistant football coach or something important.

What is this "pocketing" you speak of? In the world of ever-shrinking budgets, that's money that goes right into averting some small percentage of cuts.

It is still a "pocket" even when it belongs to the President or VP of Finance. - DvF

[sibyl]

I don't hate it, any more than I hate an unrealistic request for startup money or a pre-tenure sabbatical.  I don't blame you for asking, but that doesn't mean I can create one out of thin air.  I am going to say no, and let you decide on that basis.  Because if you say no I will probably be able to hire someone else who's pretty good.

Where you see spousal hires is when (a) the candidate is a real "get," generally at a high level, like an associate professor who just won the Pulitzer Prize or a new president or provost, and (b) the institution is willing to deal with the headache.

It's unrealistic for new assistant professors to expect spousal hires.  A much more common sequence is this:

Year 1: spouse is offered a single course in the spring semester
Year 2: spouse is invited to apply for a sabbatical replacement position
Year 3: spouse is offered a 1:1 adjunct position and/or a half-time position at the library or writing center
Year 4: spouse applies for an administrative position with teaching duties and/or a TT position

In short, the leading spouse is treated as any other new hire, and the trailing spouse is drawn into the institutional orbit and carves out a niche that may serve as a resting place or perhaps a launching pad for one or both of them.