Two-Career Families Pose Special Problem In Faculty Recruiting

Three years ago, Simon M. Schama was one of those professors who seemed destined for greatness.

A favorite among students with a growing international reputation among scholars, the European history specialist was among Harvard's most prized up-and-coming professors.

But when Schama's wife, Virginia E. Papaioannou, then an associate professor at Tufts, was offered a tenured job at Columbia in 1993, Schama agreed to leave his Harvard appointment to accept a position there.

"The way that worked out is they recruited me and once that was fairly far along in the process I let it be known that we were a two-career family," Papaioannou says. "It was pretty clear to Columbia that he was a prize catch."

The loss of Schama was not the first time Harvard lost a noted professor because his or her spouse had career possibilities in another city. Nor will it be the last.

In the increasingly competitive world of academic recruitment, an issue that was never a problem during the heyday of one-career families has come into focus as one of the most important challenges in recruiting new faculty members.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of two-career families in America has grown substantially. Today, 48 percent of all workers come from two-career families, up from 41 percent in 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is expected to top the 50-percent mark by the end of the century.

As a result of these societal changes, University recruiters are slowly discovering that they must adjust their strategies.

Persuading a well-known academic to move to the Boston area and join the ranks of the Harvard faculty becomes much more difficult when that professor has a spouse who is building momentum in a career, or is already established in a high-profile job.

Both faculty and administrators agree that the challenge of dealing with a two-career family is more than common and very important in the process of appointing new senior professors.

"It is no surprise that we are increasingly concerned about job opportunities for the spouses of faculty whom we are trying to persuade to come to Harvard," says Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

Charles S. Maier '60, Krupp Foundation professor of European Studies and Director of the Gunzburg Center for European Studies, says he had been concerned with the problem in several recruiting searches for historians.

"They are probably one of the major challenges in recruiting the people you want to professorships," Maier says.

The necessity of thinking about spousal careers during the appointment process is a significant change from the past.

"In the days of one-career marriages, housing subsidies and contacts with schools were pretty much all you had to do, but to actually find employment for the recruited person's significant other is much more difficult and chancy," says William M. Todd III, chair of the Slavic Department and soon-to-be dean of undergraduate education.

Recruiting

Many professors and administrators say it is important that appointment searches ignore the family aspect until the recruitment process, after the candidate has already been selected and cleared an ad hoc committee.

"The mandate is to find the best possible person, not the most available or most movable person," Todd says.

That's not the case at all universities. At the University of California at Berkeley, for example, "when we try to hire people it's not just who we want but can we get them," says Christina D. Romer, a professor at the school who is involved in recruiting there.

"If [their spouse] has an established medical practice we might make a formal phone call, but it's not worth the long hiring process because there's a very small chance," says Romer, who will be a professor at the Kennedy School along with her husband next year.

Professors who have found themselves in the two-career situation say that each partner wants to be considered for his or her own record, not as a recruitment tool for snagging the spouse.

Frederick Schauer, Stanton professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School, and his wife Virginia J. Wise, lecturer on law for legal research at the Law School, decided to come to Harvard in 1990 over an offer from the University of Chicago.

"One of the big appeals for both of us is that both of us were hired independently," says Schauer, who says that although he was approached first, Harvard had looked at them each individually.

Wise says the University of Chicago was just "going through the motions" with her hiring process and that they really wanted her husband.

"I'd been at Harvard before," says Wise, who worked here in the library system before her marriage, "so I knew that people knew me before I even met Fred, that I had an independent identity, and that was a very important piece for me."

Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and Physics Peter L. Galison '77 agreed.

"If it becomes apparent to a couple that the university is insensitive to it, it can actually trip up an appointment," he says.

Still, many professors in two-career marriages make a definite decision to put their family before career advancement.

Romer and her husband David, for example, have made a conscious decision to travel as a team.

"We've made it very clear to schools that we were a package," Romer says. "That surely limited the number of schools that wanted us, but we've been very happy at the schools that wanted us."

Galison also says he would not have come to Harvard had his wife, Boston University assistant professor of art Caroline A. Jones '76, not been able to find a job nearby.

Recruiting for Two

The rise of two-career families means that when Harvard is wooing a star professor, it must often double its recruiting efforts--the University has to find a place not only for a prospective professor but that person's spouse.

And indeed, the University sometimes has to pull all the strings at its disposal in order to make opportunities available.

Joseph J. McCarthy, assistant dean of the Faculty for academic planning, says Harvard's searches for jobs for professors' spouses are quite broad--and sometimes exhaustive.

"I call people, I network, I call people who might know people, I ask folks in law, in medicine, you name it, who they know, what they know," McCarthy says. "We do everything we can to help the spouse or partner in the situation to find a professional position in the Cambridge area including reaching as far as Dartmouth or Brown."

Another administrator, associate dean of the Faculty for academic planning Laura G. Fisher, says administrators call upon a broad network among Harvard departments as well as other institutions, businesses and firms in the Boston area.

Although Fisher says she won't always take the responsibility for finding jobs for spouses, "it certainly could happen that way."

But although Harvard can sometimes pull strings to get a spouse a job, rumors that Harvard stows away money for that purpose are false, administrators say.

"It makes it harder but I think it's the right way to go," McCarthy says. "I think the other things we're doing, we have to do with even more energy and imagination, but I don't think we should get into the business of creating jobs where there isn't a job, or preferring someone who is less qualified just because they're the spouse of someone we're trying to recruit."

Some professors and administrators maintain that Harvard can sometimes give spouses the inside edge on certain jobs, but only if they are qualified for those positions to begin with.

"I think if there are compelling reasons they will try and probably create opportunities," Maier says. "They certainly wouldn't do it unless they thought the second person were qualified."

But on the whole, Harvard's decentralized nature makes it difficult for one unit to impose an appointment on another, professors and administrators say.

"What I think Harvard will not do and no one wants it to do is insist that a department take a spouse to get the other person," Maier says.

Is all this effort--directed only tangentially towards Harvard's mission--really worth it?

University Hall administrators maintain that it is.

"We recognize that life is very complicated today, not that it wasn't before, but you do have more situations of two-career families and one has to be mindful of what the dislocation of one will do to the other, personally and professionally," Fisher says.

Turning Down the Big H

A tenure offer from Harvard University is a great honor for any scholar.

Universally acclaimed as one of the top research institutions in America, Harvard's library system is eclipsed only by the Library of Congress, and its breadth of talented scholars and students is perhaps unsurpassed in the world.

Sometimes, however, no matter how enamored a professor is of the University's facilities and people, family considerations must come first.

And an increasing number of professors are turning down tenure offers from America's oldest university.

Some professors feel that Harvard's diminishing influence is another factor in the choice of family over appointment.

"A lot of Harvard's way of doing things is based on the Olympian view of when you call people they will come and life's just more complicated now," says Professor of Astronomy Robert P. Kirchner '70, chair of the Astronomy Department.

Schauer agrees.

"People no longer think that Harvard is sufficiently more wonderful than everywhere else that they are going to ask their spouses to make a professional sacrifice just so they can be at Harvard," he says.

But Harvard still does manage to bring in its share of recruits. Administrators attribute part of the edge to the wealth of professional opportunities--academic and otherwise--that the Boston area offers.

"We are mercifully fortunate in our location: this area has masses of opportunity in universities and other fields," Knowles says.

Harvard faces perhaps a little more difficulty recruiting people with families because it tends to hire more people directly to senior professorships than other universities, according to Kirshner.

"Harvard is different from other places in the sense that we tend to hire more people at the tenure level," said Kirshner, "and of course what that means is people put down roots in a community and that means both people in a couple."

Modern trends have led some professors to call for a change in how Harvard does its hiring.

Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, for example, says more internal promotions would help solve the problem.

"The main effect of professional spouses is that we cannot recruit some people whom we would like as senior faculty," Feldman wrote in an e-mail message. "This makes it more important to make excellent junior appointments and promote them."

But no matter what, the family issue can not be ignored, professors say.

"I think that if in the course of recruiting it's taken seriously from the beginning it can be either an enormous draw or it can be an impediment and ultimately trip up and make impossible recruitment," Galison says.Economists Christina D. and David Romer (Top) have recently been recruited by the Kennedy School from the University of California at Berkeley. The husband-and-wife team decided some time ago that they come as a package. Joseph P. McCarthy (Right) is an assistant dean of the Faculty who has networked connections at Harvard and in the greater Boston area to find professional opportunities of all kinds for the spouses of new recruits to the Harvard faculty.

"They are probably one of the major challenges in recruiting the people you want to professorships," Maier says.

The necessity of thinking about spousal careers during the appointment process is a significant change from the past.

"In the days of one-career marriages, housing subsidies and contacts with schools were pretty much all you had to do, but to actually find employment for the recruited person's significant other is much more difficult and chancy," says William M. Todd III, chair of the Slavic Department and soon-to-be dean of undergraduate education.

Recruiting

Many professors and administrators say it is important that appointment searches ignore the family aspect until the recruitment process, after the candidate has already been selected and cleared an ad hoc committee.

"The mandate is to find the best possible person, not the most available or most movable person," Todd says.

That's not the case at all universities. At the University of California at Berkeley, for example, "when we try to hire people it's not just who we want but can we get them," says Christina D. Romer, a professor at the school who is involved in recruiting there.

"If [their spouse] has an established medical practice we might make a formal phone call, but it's not worth the long hiring process because there's a very small chance," says Romer, who will be a professor at the Kennedy School along with her husband next year.

Professors who have found themselves in the two-career situation say that each partner wants to be considered for his or her own record, not as a recruitment tool for snagging the spouse.

Frederick Schauer, Stanton professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School, and his wife Virginia J. Wise, lecturer on law for legal research at the Law School, decided to come to Harvard in 1990 over an offer from the University of Chicago.

"One of the big appeals for both of us is that both of us were hired independently," says Schauer, who says that although he was approached first, Harvard had looked at them each individually.

Wise says the University of Chicago was just "going through the motions" with her hiring process and that they really wanted her husband.

"I'd been at Harvard before," says Wise, who worked here in the library system before her marriage, "so I knew that people knew me before I even met Fred, that I had an independent identity, and that was a very important piece for me."

Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and Physics Peter L. Galison '77 agreed.

"If it becomes apparent to a couple that the university is insensitive to it, it can actually trip up an appointment," he says.

Still, many professors in two-career marriages make a definite decision to put their family before career advancement.

Romer and her husband David, for example, have made a conscious decision to travel as a team.

"We've made it very clear to schools that we were a package," Romer says. "That surely limited the number of schools that wanted us, but we've been very happy at the schools that wanted us."

Galison also says he would not have come to Harvard had his wife, Boston University assistant professor of art Caroline A. Jones '76, not been able to find a job nearby.

Recruiting for Two

The rise of two-career families means that when Harvard is wooing a star professor, it must often double its recruiting efforts--the University has to find a place not only for a prospective professor but that person's spouse.

And indeed, the University sometimes has to pull all the strings at its disposal in order to make opportunities available.

Joseph J. McCarthy, assistant dean of the Faculty for academic planning, says Harvard's searches for jobs for professors' spouses are quite broad--and sometimes exhaustive.

"I call people, I network, I call people who might know people, I ask folks in law, in medicine, you name it, who they know, what they know," McCarthy says. "We do everything we can to help the spouse or partner in the situation to find a professional position in the Cambridge area including reaching as far as Dartmouth or Brown."

Another administrator, associate dean of the Faculty for academic planning Laura G. Fisher, says administrators call upon a broad network among Harvard departments as well as other institutions, businesses and firms in the Boston area.

Although Fisher says she won't always take the responsibility for finding jobs for spouses, "it certainly could happen that way."

But although Harvard can sometimes pull strings to get a spouse a job, rumors that Harvard stows away money for that purpose are false, administrators say.

"It makes it harder but I think it's the right way to go," McCarthy says. "I think the other things we're doing, we have to do with even more energy and imagination, but I don't think we should get into the business of creating jobs where there isn't a job, or preferring someone who is less qualified just because they're the spouse of someone we're trying to recruit."

Some professors and administrators maintain that Harvard can sometimes give spouses the inside edge on certain jobs, but only if they are qualified for those positions to begin with.

"I think if there are compelling reasons they will try and probably create opportunities," Maier says. "They certainly wouldn't do it unless they thought the second person were qualified."

But on the whole, Harvard's decentralized nature makes it difficult for one unit to impose an appointment on another, professors and administrators say.

"What I think Harvard will not do and no one wants it to do is insist that a department take a spouse to get the other person," Maier says.

Is all this effort--directed only tangentially towards Harvard's mission--really worth it?

University Hall administrators maintain that it is.

"We recognize that life is very complicated today, not that it wasn't before, but you do have more situations of two-career families and one has to be mindful of what the dislocation of one will do to the other, personally and professionally," Fisher says.

Turning Down the Big H

A tenure offer from Harvard University is a great honor for any scholar.

Universally acclaimed as one of the top research institutions in America, Harvard's library system is eclipsed only by the Library of Congress, and its breadth of talented scholars and students is perhaps unsurpassed in the world.

Sometimes, however, no matter how enamored a professor is of the University's facilities and people, family considerations must come first.

And an increasing number of professors are turning down tenure offers from America's oldest university.

Some professors feel that Harvard's diminishing influence is another factor in the choice of family over appointment.

"A lot of Harvard's way of doing things is based on the Olympian view of when you call people they will come and life's just more complicated now," says Professor of Astronomy Robert P. Kirchner '70, chair of the Astronomy Department.

Schauer agrees.

"People no longer think that Harvard is sufficiently more wonderful than everywhere else that they are going to ask their spouses to make a professional sacrifice just so they can be at Harvard," he says.

But Harvard still does manage to bring in its share of recruits. Administrators attribute part of the edge to the wealth of professional opportunities--academic and otherwise--that the Boston area offers.

"We are mercifully fortunate in our location: this area has masses of opportunity in universities and other fields," Knowles says.

Harvard faces perhaps a little more difficulty recruiting people with families because it tends to hire more people directly to senior professorships than other universities, according to Kirshner.

"Harvard is different from other places in the sense that we tend to hire more people at the tenure level," said Kirshner, "and of course what that means is people put down roots in a community and that means both people in a couple."

Modern trends have led some professors to call for a change in how Harvard does its hiring.

Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman, for example, says more internal promotions would help solve the problem.

"The main effect of professional spouses is that we cannot recruit some people whom we would like as senior faculty," Feldman wrote in an e-mail message. "This makes it more important to make excellent junior appointments and promote them."

But no matter what, the family issue can not be ignored, professors say.

"I think that if in the course of recruiting it's taken seriously from the beginning it can be either an enormous draw or it can be an impediment and ultimately trip up and make impossible recruitment," Galison says.Economists Christina D. and David Romer (Top) have recently been recruited by the Kennedy School from the University of California at Berkeley. The husband-and-wife team decided some time ago that they come as a package. Joseph P. McCarthy (Right) is an assistant dean of the Faculty who has networked connections at Harvard and in the greater Boston area to find professional opportunities of all kinds for the spouses of new recruits to the Harvard faculty.