Aaron, you seem to have a whole lot on your mind re this topic! Clearly, for a spousal hire to take place, one of the spice had to have many of the properties to which I alluded, and it's really unlikely that the other would be hired unless he/she also had such abilities and achievements as well, although in less superlative supplies.
Not all spousal hires are what they seem. Sometimes universities get a great deal by offering one position (plus two sets of benefits) to two people. For most applicants for faculty jobs, it's a buyers' market, with the institutions having a bit of an upper hand. But it's a sellers' market for the top people, and spousal hires are a major inducement used to recruit the top folks. The cost of recruiting a sub-par faculty member who winds up not getting tenure – in terms of start-up and renovation costs, direct and indirect research costs foregone, students and post-docs foregone, and negative impact on a department's reputation nationally and internationally, to say nothing of the life-long adverse (often, hugely adverse) impacts on the faculty member him/herself – are simply too great for departments not to try their damnedest to recruit the person(s) they see having the greatest potential. At least in the cases with which I'm familiar, spousal hires at the tenure-track level are hardly automatic, and alternative appointments of a spouse as a research assistant or senior scientist or academic staff are the most likely development if the spouse really isn't up to tenure-track standards at the institution in question. Such appointments are almost always put on the leadership of a non-spouse, to avoid problems of nepotism (or even worse problems if a divorce occurs). And spousal hires at the faculty level often (but not always) are made in other departments, for many of the same reasons. I believe that an increased emphasis on spousal hires in academics is a humane development. It's one of the very few ways that academic jobs have become less daunting over the past twenty years. I don't have data, but I suspect faculty-faculty marriages split much more frequently 30 years ago, when spousal hires were rare, than they do today. That's a good thing (a very good thing) for faculty and especially for their children. Cheers, Tom Thomas J. Givnish Henry Allan Gleason Professor of Botany University of Wisconsin [email protected] http://botany.wisc.edu/givnish/Givnish/Welcome.html On 10/20/12, "Aaron T. Dossey" wrote: > > How do you explain the very high number of spousal hires? > > > On 10/18/2012 10:03 PM, Thomas J. Givnish wrote: > >you need excellent research, combined with strong writing and oral > >presentation skills, ability to think on your feet, and empathy to interact > >well with students and colleagues, to have a real chance of success at > >landing a job at first- or second-tier universities. > > > -- > Aaron T. Dossey, Ph.D. > Biochemistry and Molecular Biology > Founder/Owner: All Things Bugs > Capitalizing on Low-Crawling Fruit from Insect-Based Innovation > http://allthingsbugs.com/about/people/ > http://www.facebook.com/Allthingsbugs > 1-352-281-3643 --
