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[ajnd80]

Hello all,
 I have been offered a TT position in a large state university. My spouse and I have not taken a final decision on it yet. If we move to this position, my wife would have to give up her current job. One of her thoughts is to pursue a Ph.D. (in the same University and School but a different department). I indicated this to the Search Committee and Chair of my department during my visit.
 I would like to hear from others on this forum who might have had similar experiences in the past, and how it turned out. In your case, was your department able to secure admission and financial support for your spouse to pursue a Ph.D. in a different department? How did you negotiate with them on this? Is one department typically able to influence the other enough to be able to offer a 'package' to us - TT position for me in one department, and teaching assistantship for my spouse in another?

Any helpful tips, comments, etc. would be appreciated.

regards,

Ankur

[zharkov]

Many universities offer free or reduced tuition for family members; so you'll want to look into that.   About acceptance to a program, I suspect it has to do with how competitive the program is.  If the "large state university" is a flagship, then it may be more of an issue than if it was a compass point.

[janewales]

I direct a graduate program. We accept only a small number of PhDs every year, and we fund all our PhDs, so it's no trivial thing to add someone to our roster. An applicant's association with someone elsewhere in the university would have no bearing on our decision, and I would in fact probably resent attempted interference in our admissions from another department. Even if the other department volunteered to fund the student fully (and that would cost about 130K over the life of the student's program), I'd still say no if s/he didn't meet our criteria both in terms of qualifications and fit for our program.

[yellowtractor]

I have an old graduate school chum who just moved to another university and negotiated precisely this for his spouse.  I think a lot has to do with the size and institutional culture of the school in question.

Some schools--especially in remote locations--have policies of trying to accommodate spouses (whether they actually do accommodate in the event is another question).  Accepting a spouse into a Ph.D. program would be less disruptive than, say, creating a tenure-track line for said spouse, or even hiring him or her full-time.

In all those cases, though, it's not a case of "one department influencing another."  It's a case of higher-level administration (dean or provost) putting pressure on the other department on behalf of the candidate.

[2clueless]

This worked out for colleagues of mine, except that the only accommodation they asked for was a waiver of the application deadline. (The department was top 15 in the student's field and maybe ~top 50 in the tt field.) TT spouse was hired after the department had notified its accepted applicants, but before the deadline that students needed to respond. Student spouse was a rockstar, as it happened, and was essentially accepted instead of someone on the waiting list, including full funding.

(Well, it "worked out" in terms of admissions/tt-hiring. When it turned out that rockstar student was truly a rockstar and would have surpass tt-spouse in terms of relative influence on their respective fields, the marriage dissolved, but that's another issue.)

[systeme_d_]

I direct a graduate program. We accept only a small number of PhDs every year, and we fund all our PhDs, so it's no trivial thing to add someone to our roster. An applicant's association with someone elsewhere in the university would have no bearing on our decision, and I would in fact probably resent attempted interference in our admissions from another department. Even if the other department volunteered to fund the student fully (and that would cost about 130K over the life of the student's program), I'd still say no if s/he didn't meet our criteria both in terms of qualifications and fit for our program.

This.  No question.

[quoog]

I knew someone who did this.. he was recruited into a top 15 department and in order to get him they had to let his wife into the PhD program in the same field. She was nowhere near qualified and flunked out. He's still there so I guess this strategy worked for the department. Needless to say he was pretty pissed off at his department for a while though.