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When to raise issue of spousal appointment?

Brian Leiter

A junior faculty member writes:

I am an assistant professor, approaching tenure. When I was hired, I received multiple assurances that the university would assist me with a spousal accommodation. When my spouse's work situation changed, I approached my dean and department chair, who were receptive to helping. A suitable position was found, but there was no funding to make the hire. I have no doubt that my department wants to keep me here. I am now on the job market, and have some prospects, including upcoming campus visits. My question concerns the best strategy for proceeding. Should I receive a desirable offer, I am willing to give my current institution a chance to make me a better offer (although I have doubts that they can offer much). My question is whether I should tell them now that I am actively seeking another position, or wait to see if a better offer materializes. My fear is that if I do not get an offer elsewhere, I will have nothing with which to negotiate. On the other hand, I worry about tipping my hand too soon. Thoughts and advice from readers who have experience with this (from either side) would be appreciated.

My view is that if you have previously communicated your interest in some kind of spousal accomodation, all you can do is reiterate it.  It would be a mistake to say anything about "looking around," precisely because you might come up empty-handed, and your colleagues might well hold it against you.  If you get an offer, then it is quite appropriate to raise the pertinent issues; absent an offer, there is nothing to say, beyond mentioning, when appropriate, the spousal accomodation issue.

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7 responses to “When to raise issue of spousal appointment?”

  1. Michael Kremer

    I am not sure I agree with Brian. I think the faculty member in question should inform his or her chair of the upcoming campus visits. This gives the chair the chance to begin to put together a case for a counter-offer. If the faculty member waits until an actual offer is in hand, it may be too late for a suitable counter-offer to be generated, especially if this involves creating a spousal position. I cannot see myself how reasonable colleagues could hold anything against someone in this faculty member's position.

    BL COMMENT: For the record, I want to say that Michael is the Platonic form of a reasonable colleague!

    Reply
  2. Prof. Plum

    An equally important question for the junior faculty member is when to mention the issue of spousal accommodations while at an on-campus interview. Indeed, I initially thought this was the faculty member's concern. I was told by someone who has been both a department chair and in the dean's office that it should be mentioned early in the process on campus, perhaps to the dean or the chair or both. This way they can see what resources they have to accommodate you.

    BL COMMENT: My own view is that these matters should only be raised AFTER an offer is made, not before.

    Reply
  3. David Boonin

    A number of universities, including mine, regularly offer preemptive retention offers to faculty members who are finalists for a position but who do not yet have an offer. We would typically offer less to a finalist than to someone who has an offer in hand, but it is not that unusual, at least at some universities, to offer a faculty member something in exchange for withdrawing from a search and not only for turning down an offer they have received. I would suggest that the faculty member ask their chair whether their university has such a practice. If it does not, then there is probably not much to do but wait and see if they get an offer (though I agree with Michael Kremer's point above that telling the chair now would at least give the chair more time to construct a case). But if the university does have such a practice, then I would strongly encourage the faculty member to raise the issue right away and ask their chair to see if the university would secure funds for a spousal position in exchange for the faculty member withdrawing from the search. I have worked on a number of preemptive retention offers in the last few years from the administrative side and from that point of view I would say that the sooner we are alerted to the request the more likely it is that something satisfactory can be worked out. And I also don't think there is typically much of a downside to people knowing that you were a finalist even if you don't end up getting any offers this time around. In this job market, simply being a finalist can be an impressive accomplishment and one that it can be useful for your administration to be aware of.

    Reply
  4. J. W. Showalter

    Naïve question:

    If you're going to flyouts at different universities while teaching at your present school, won't your colleagues figure it out no matter what you do?

    Suppose you get flyouts at three different schools. Normally, this would seem to require being absent for a total of seven to nine teaching days spread over two months or less. How could this be managed without tipping your hand? And if you're going to tip your hand, wouldn't it be better to be up front about it?

    Reply
  5. Matt Weiner

    It seems to me that if your spouse does not have a position near your job, then it would be unreasonable for your colleagues to hold it against you for looking for positions where your spouse does have a position. This is especially true if your dean and department chair have been receptive to helping resolve the situation but haven't actually been able to do so. But the fact that it would be unreasonable for your colleagues to hold this against you doesn't necessarily mean that they won't.

    Maybe more pertinently, as J.W. Showalter says it will probably be very difficult in any case to conceal from your colleagues that you're going on campus visits, and anyone who would be inclined to hold your job-seeking against you if you told them about will certainly hold it against you if they find out about it some other way. Also, in your situation (where the position for your spouse was found but not funded) your colleagues are probably expecting you to look for other offers anyway.

    About mentioning the possibility at an interview: One thing to be aware of is that, if you don't mention your marital/partner status, people involved in the hiring status are not legally allowed to ask you any questions about it. (Again, that doesn't mean they won't!) This might mean that if you want to find out something about spousal accommodations, you'll have to ask someone yourself, most likely the dean.

    Also, and Prof. Leiter can express his views on this, I wonder whether it is wise to delay bringing up the question of spousal accommodations until an offer has been made. Typically once an offer is made the offering department will expect an answer within two weeks or so, so as not to lose out on its second-choice candidate in case the offer is declined. This does not seem like much time to resolve the question of spousal accommodation.

    BL COMMENT: Point about timing is a fair one. That is why it's good to raise the spousal issue in a cordial way independent of any indicating that one is shopping around.

    Reply
  6. Junior faculty

    Thanks for the advice (thus far). These are all good points, although I remain conflicted on the matter. As for concealing my campus visits, it has not been an issue so far, and with my current teaching schedule, I don't anticipate it will be.

    Reply
  7. Matt Weiner

    I'd like to clarify in response to Brian's comment on my comment; when I talked about bringing up the question of spousal accommodations, I was thinking of bringing it up with the department with which you are doing a campus visit rather than your current home department. Naturally you should bring it up with your home department as soon as you can! But I have no advice as to when it is appropriate to bring it up with the hiring department; on the one hand you may not want to be seen as getting ahead of yourself, on the other hand if you don't bring it up in advance then you may have no time to bring it up once it needs to be brought up. Whether it would benefit or harm you to bring it up early in the hiring process is likely, alas, to depend on specific features of the hiring department that you may not know about.

    I'm afraid this isn't likely to make you any less conflicted!

    Reply

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