On two-academic couples

Jeffrey Harrison, on his blog Class Bias in Higher Education, had a post a few weeks ago on what he calls The New Cronyism, at the core of which is schools' practice of finding jobs for spouses of faculty candidates and members. Harrison labels this "cronyism" because it involves hiring or pushing someone for a job on something other than merit, in this case the identity of who that person is married to. Harrison identifies three common forms of this cronyism: 1) the Dean calling in favors around town to help the spouse land a job; 2) another department in the university hiring (or at least considering) the spouse; and 3) the law school hiring (or at least considering) the spouse. Harrison argues this is no different than the old-boys'-network hiring of the 1970s.

But it seems to me there is a difference between cronyism that creates and perpetuates a closed hiring system and steps taken, at least in appropriate cases (whatever that means--see below), to enable couples and families to create a workable living situation while both pursue successful careers. Given modern realities of two-career/often two-academic couples and the fact that the numbers of such couples are only going to increase, schools must  consider accommodating or trying to arrange accommodations for spouses, of all genders (a heterosexual male faculty member is just as likely these days to have a wife with a career as the converse). And this is no longer limited to lateral couples; more and more entry-level candidates either have a spouse already in teaching or a spouse on the market at the same time. Last year, we made four entry-level offers and three had academic spouses. The year before, two of our entry-level candidates had spouses who already had been teaching law for several years. In the end, we were not able to hire any of them, for a variety of reasons, but considerations of the spouses' career were part of every conversation.

This also may be an example of academia (especially legal academia) being a unique business, given the small number of jobs, their often-smaller locations, and the lack of geographic control that (most) faculty have. If I am a practicing lawyer and my wife is a teacher and we live or move to Chicago, there is a good chance we both (eventually, assuming a decent economy) will be able to pursue our careers. Or, if I am a practicing attorney in Chicago and I decide to change jobs, there is a pretty good chance I will be able to find something in Chicago and my wife will not have to change jobs at all. By contrast, my chances of getting a teaching job in Chicago are relatively small. If my only teaching opportunity is in Norman, OK (sorry to pick on you, Sooners), my lawyer wife's options to pursue her career are going to be more limited and may require the assistance of someone (such as the law school dean) who can at least put her on the radar of potential employers. And if we both are academics, her options are even more limited. Without the possibility of a hire at the same university (in or out of the same department) or at least some help in the community, the option is surrender one of our careers or live apart--neither of which is appealing to many couples and families.

Harrison's argument against these sorts of hires or actions rests on three points. One, he believes it is a bad idea, that having spouses occupy two positions in the same department is worse than having two unrelated people in those positions. Two, and related, the spouse often is someone the school would not otherwise consider. Three, he believes it is unnecessary to hire the spouse to keep the faculty member, because losing the faculty member is not that big a deal--"from about the 20th ranked law school on down we are all basically fungible. No faculty member leaving any of those schools will create a hardship or a change in quality." Jeff has been teaching much longer than I have and I have no first-hand experience with same-department spouses, so I cannot speak to the first point. I question the fungibility of all faculty, if for no other reason than an equally capable teacher and scholar may not be as good a colleague as my current one.

One way to think about this may be to fine-grain our understanding of hiring spouses within one department. We can identify four possible scenarios: 1) Both people are independently strong and needed (in terms of curricular fit) candidates who would be hired independently; hiring both becomes a recruiting tool so they can be in the same place and allows us to fill two needs at once; 2) One person is needed, the spouse isn't, but the spouse is a credible candidate who is qualified (or better) for a faculty position at the school and would, in fact, be a good addition to the faculty; again, hiring them both is a recruiting tool so they can be in the same place and we benefit from having another good person on the faculty; 3) the trailing spouse truly is just along for the ride and would not be a viable or hirable candidate on his own; and 4) the trailing spouse is not an academic but thinks an academic job would be a lot of fun, so please hire him.

I agree that numbers 3 and 4 are problematic, in that standards are genuinely being changed or ignored and could come back to haunt the school. But the other two situations might work to the benefit of a hiring school (especially a lower-ranked one) in attracting faculty. And the line between #2 and # 3 certainly is highly subjective and fuzzy, if not ethereal; faculty will disagree about which category a particular spouse/candidate falls into. And there is a risk that we may convince ourselves, wrongly, that a # 3 really is a # 2 just because we want the spouse/primary candidate so much. On the other hand, at a school that is less bound to curricular needs and can do a lot of "best-athlete" hiring (usually not us, unfortunately), the line between # 1 and # 2 largely disappears. And it may be a question of degree--if the spouse is in category # 3, how far below our standards does he fall? And if only a little, sometimes the trade-off be worth it for some other benefit.

What is not clear from Jeff's post is the objections to hiring a faculty spouse, beyond the cronyism (which, again, strikes me as less nefarious in form than older versions)? Let's assume spouses who fall in my first or second categories. What is the problem? Is it a concern that the couple will vote as a bloc or that one spouse will control the other, thus giving that faculty member "two votes" (sort of like the old joke about Justices Scalia and Thomas and how they should just give Scalia two votes in every case)? Is it that they will bring their domestic spats into the workplace, creating tension? Is it that the marriage might fail and then you have two faculty members who fundamentally do not get along? Is it that they will get special accommodations (say, with scheduling) to manage their family obligations that other faculty do not receive? Is it that we will be unable to make difficult, principled P&T decisions if one of the couple does not pan out as a scholar/teacher, knowing that the denial means losing the spouse, or, at the very least, really angering the spouse? The last one carries some heft, but is it only a difference of degree from the reaction to any P&T denial?  If, to the extent possible, we ensure that both partners fall within # 1 or # 2 (or even not to far out of the range in # 3) in my division, we reduce that risk. To say nothing of the fact that only 5 % of tenure candidates in the legal academy are denied tenure.

The problems with other-department hires are even less clear. It could raise financial issues, if the law school is contributing funds to pay the spouse's salary in another department (a practice at some schools). Of course, at other schools, the provost's office gets involved, recognizing this new reality and the need to get the university behind some efforts to recruit and retain faculty. It still puts the faculty and administration in the other department in a bind come P&T time, knowing that the law school is depending on a favorable decision from this department to keep the law professor. It potentially strains relations between the law school and other departments, at least depending on how heavy a hand the law school dean plays--"please take a look at X" is very different than "you must hire X." Again, the hope is that the spouse we are recommending is a # 1 or # 2 for that other department and that we are not asking them to lower their standards for their tenure-track hiring. Quality control need not be lost.

Finally, from personal experience, I would like to think that some cases work out well. When I was hired at FIU, I asked the dean for help getting my wife entree with FIU's School of Social Work and/or School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (she has masters' degrees in both areas). At the time, we were not truly a two-academic couple in the usual sense, since she had never held an academic job and she was not necessarily looking for a tenure-track position. The School of Social Work hired her as a visiting faculty member and assistant coordinator of their externship program and eventually put her on a non-tenure-track line and made her the coordinator. Would they have interviewed her without a "can you take a look at her?" from the law school dean (category # 2 of Jeffrey's model)? Hard to say. But nine years later she is associate director of the school and was chosen for a university leadership development program. And I have turned down potential opportunities at other schools so we both can pursue what we have here, which features administrative opportunities she would not have elsewhere, at least right away. So I guess that school is grateful that my position on the law faculty presented her to them and the law school (or at least one or two people at the law school) are grateful that her position in Social Work connects us to the university. Even if it is a form of cronyism.

Of course, things might have been different if I also had been trying to get her hired at the law school or into a tenure-earning job in Social Work. And maybe we just got lucky and so did the other department. My point is that, while there are risks, per se opposition to the practice may deprive law schools, other departments, and universities of real benefits. And labeling it with a pejorative like cronyism does not help. 

Update: Jennifer Hendricks picks up the thread and notes an underlying gender issues that I did not address: Even if the overall trend is that more and more faculty of both genders have "trailing" spouses/partners with out-of-the-home careers who will need some help, male faculty remain more likely to have a stay-at-home spouse than female faculty do. Thus, any flat refusal or reluctance to hire or help spouses potentially has a disparate impact on hiring women.

Another Update: A reader emails and makes a good point: Recruiting couples (or helping a spouse in another department in the university) is as likely (if not more likely) to allow a school to get people they would not otherwise get as it is to stick a school with someone it doesn't want. And I think that's right. If A is a law professor with 2d tier credentials and his spouse is a law professor with Top-50 credentials, maybe a lower-ranked school could get both by being willing to hire both.