How to Marry Into Academia:
Colleges and universities even have a formalized response. When the two-body problem arises, departments may engage in a practice known as partner hiring: They ask their deans or the heads of other departments to find or create a job for the partner of a person they’d like to hire. Sometimes those extra jobs are tenure-track (the kind that scholars want most), but other times they are something less: lectureships, research positions, or even staff positions such as project managers. Some schools allocate part of their budget for partner hires every year, considering it a recruitment expense. Others turn to regional contacts, hoping to place scholars at nearby institutions for mutual benefit.
The practice of accommodating academic spouses is now second nature in higher education. It’s part of the furniture of academic life, casting its shadow across every school and each department. Partner hiring is widely understood to be beneficial and even necessary when it comes to faculty recruitment. But its effects on the academic labor market, and on the research and educational practice of colleges and universities, is still poorly understood. Hiring—or refusing to hire—academic partners can have a dramatic impact on morale; and faculty are hardly of one mind about its virtue.
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