It's hard to navigate the Ophthalmology and Urology labor market without a couples match

The Ophthalmology and Urology matches are earlier than the NRMP resident match, and do not offer a couples match. Based on a survey of Ophthalmology and Urology match participants, the authors outline the need for a couples match.

Navigating the Ophthalmology & Urology Match with a Significant Other by lSamantha S. Massenzio MD *, Tara A. Uhler MD †, Erik M. Massenzio MD †, Emily Sun BS *, Divya Srikumaran MD *, Marisa M. Clifton MD ‡, Laura K. Green MD §, Grace Sun MD ║, Jiangxia Wang MS ¶, Fasika A. Woreta MD, MPH *  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2022.07.026  Journal of Surgical Education, Volume 80, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 135-142

"Highlights:

• There is an increasing number of couples applying for residency

• Ophthalmology and urology applicants cannot utilize the NRMP Couples Match system

• A Couples Match is highly desired by applicants to these two specialties

• The lack of a Couples Match is a deterrent to these specialties for some applicants

• Systems to aid applicants to these specialties with significant others are needed"

The importance of couples matching for medical residents (it's missed where it's missing)

 One of the successes of the design of the NRMP Match for medical residents is that it accommodates couples, using the Roth-Peranson algorithm*.  Here's an article reflecting on the fact that the Ophthalmology and Urology matches are done outside of the NRMP, and don't have a couples match.

Massenzio, Samantha S., Tara A. Uhler, Erik M. Massenzio, Emily Sun, Divya Srikumaran, Marisa M. Clifton, Laura K. Green, Grace Sun, Jiangxia Wang, and Fasika A. Woreta. "Navigating the Ophthalmology & Urology Match with a Significant Other." Journal of Surgical Education (2022).

"• There is an increasing number of couples applying for residency

• Ophthalmology and urology applicants cannot utilize the NRMP Couples Match system

• A Couples Match is highly desired by applicants to these two specialties

• The lack of a Couples Match is a deterrent to these specialties for some applicants

• Systems to aid applicants to these specialties with significant others are needed"

...

"The Couples Match is currently not offered to applicants to ophthalmology or urology as these specialties utilize separate match systems outside of NRMP - the San Francisco (SF) Match1 and Urology Residency Matching Program,2 respectively. Historically, the NRMP implemented the match starting in 1952 for internship programs (postgraduate year 1) only. Individual specialties later established their own systems for matching to advanced training beyond internship; for ophthalmology this occurred in 1979, and urology in 1985. While other specialties have since merged their match processes with the NRMP, ophthalmology and urology continue to facilitate their own match.3, 4, 5

"Ophthalmology and urology also have an “early match,” with match results released in January or February versus in mid-March for applicants using the NRMP. This was historically advantageous because of the preliminary internship year required for both ophthalmology and urology, allowing applicants to rank their preference for internship year in the NRMP based on the outcome of their specialty match. However, as of 2021 and 2019, ophthalmology6 and urology7 respectively transitioned to an integrated or joint internship model, meaning that an internship position is secured at the same time as the specialty match. Given these changes, it is currently timely to evaluate applicant viewpoints on the Couples Match.

...

"Survey Findings

"107 respondents reported having a significant other in medicine (72 ophthalmology, 35 urology), making up 31% of all respondents. 68 (64%) significant others applied in the same cycle as the survey respondent, 11 (10%) applied before, and 28 (26%) will apply after. If the Couples Match had been available, 78% of respondents with a significant other who applied in the same cycle reported that they would have participated.

...

"The lack of a Couples Match is a deterrent to ophthalmology and urology for over one-fifth of applicants with a significant other. Of applicants’ partners who considered ophthalmology or urology, over one-third reported to have been deterred. These findings suggest that for many students who want to be in the same location as their partner in medicine, ophthalmology and urology are specialty choices that may be less desirable toward this end. It is unclear how this impacts efforts to foster more diversity (in terms of gender, race, and other factors) in these specialties.

"The inability for ophthalmology and urology applicants to use the Couples Match adds significant stress to an already difficult application season with survey respondents commenting on the negative mental health effects. In addition, there is currently no official avenue for ophthalmology and urology applicants to communicate a desire to match in proximity to a significant other. Although applicants found methods to overcome this barrier, such as by mentioning their significant other during interviews, a majority indicated that there were times that they were hesitant to discuss their significant other out of concern that it would negatively affect their chances of matching, with female applicants disproportionately affected.

"Regarding the early match, most applicants liked receiving match designations sooner; however, there are mixed responses as to whether or not this timeline is helpful for individuals with a significant other in medicine. The authors are aware that a benefit of the early match for ophthalmology/urology applicants is that a significant other applying through the regular NRMP match has the opportunity to selectively contact programs in the vicinity of the applicant's matched program to express heightened interest. Disadvantages to the early match include that once the ophthalmology/urology applicant matches, their significant other has a limited number of programs in the vicinity to choose from - this is in contrast to a Couples Match where any pair of programs in any location may be ranked. This may also be exacerbated by recent efforts to limit the number of applications submitted or interviews accepted by each student.16, 17, 18 Further, the early match does not help individuals whose significant other is also applying to ophthalmology or urology as they would not be able to take advantage of the difference in timeline between partners. It is presently very challenging for a couple who both want to apply in the same year to ophthalmology or urology to be able to coordinate their match outcome to the same location."

##########

*Roth, A. E. and Elliott Peranson, "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, 89, 4, September, 1999, 748-780

NRMP Match Day, 2019

Today is match day, when imminent medical grads find out where they'll be starting residencies in July.

Here's the NRMP's press release:
Thousands Of Resident Physician Applicants Celebrate NRMP Match Results
2019 Main Residency Match is largest on record with 44,600 registered applicants and more than 35,000 positions offered

Here are some data tables, including this one on couples:

Here's an article in Stat reflecting on some current issues of marketplace maintenence, related to what certainly seems to have become excessive pre-match interviewing:

Ideas for easing medical students’ Match Day ‘frenzy’
By ALISON VOLPE HOLMES and MONA M. ABAZA MARCH 15, 2019

"The National Residency Matching Program is an admirable invention. Now more than 30 years old, it is the system through which medical students get their first paid, professional positions. It corrected past abuses that took advantage of students, often pressuring them to accept binding offers within 24 hours of a residency interview. The Match is sufficiently noteworthy that its creator, Alvin Ross, won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on matching theory. His algorithm continues to place half of U.S. medical school graduates in their first-choice programs. Other professions and selection processes could be improved by using a similar matching system.

Yet the Match and what leads up to it are having growing pains. Medical students are applying to increasing numbers of residency programs, sometimes to all of the programs in a field. Residency program directors are flooded with applications, and have trouble identifying which students are truly interested.

...

"Otolaryngology (also known as ear, nose, and throat) offers a telling illustration of this problem, and a potential solution that failed. In 2010, the average student interested in an otolaryngology residency applied to 47 programs, and the average residency program received 200 applications from U.S. medical students — to fill just two to six positions. By 2015, this increased to 64 applications per student and 275 applications per program.

"The program directors attempted to exert some control over application inflation by asking students to write a paragraph about their interest in the program they were applying for. This reduced applications, but also backfired. In 2017, the number of applications fell back to 200 per program, but 10 programsfailed to get the number of residents they needed. The otolaryngology program directors removed the supplemental requirement and applications jumped back up to 278.

...

"The Match was once a brilliant solution that everyone in medicine was proud of. There are still lessons to be learned from it for other selection processes, including undergraduate admissions. But if we — students, advising deans, and residency program directors — do not come together and work on solutions, we risk losing the Match’s great many advantages."

The residency match in Otolaryngology

A recent paper looks at the resident match in Otolarygology, in the context of the overall resident match.

State of Otolaryngology Match: Has Competition Increased since the ‘‘Early’’
Match?  by Cristina Cabrera-Muffly, Jeanelle Sheeder, and Mona Abaza, in the journal Otolaryngology--Head Neck Surgert 2015 Feb 24

"Over the past 60 years, the United States residency match process and characteristics of medical students applying to the match have changed considerably. Centralized matching of postgraduate training positions was successfully implemented nationwide in 1952.1 At that time, just over 10,000 positions were offered through the match. In the 2013 match cycle, there were almost 50 different specialties that offer PGY-1 positions through the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) match and a total of 26,392 positions offered.2

In 2006, in response to concerns about physician shortages, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended an increase in the number of medical student postions.3 There was an overwhelming response among allopathic programs in both new schools (13 have matriculated their first class since 2006) and larger class sizes in established schools, with rosters expanding 15% to 18%.3,4 Meanwhile, osteopathic medical schools have doubled in number from 15 to 30 over the past 20 years.3 Therefore, the overall number of graduating medical students has increased considerably, reaching an all-time high in 2013.5 This has a direct effect on the quantity of medical students seeking any residency position, including otolaryngology.

The otolaryngology match has also undergone several iterations since its beginnings. In late 1977, otolaryngology and ophthalmology specialties officially separated.6 In 2006, the otolaryngology match transitioned from coordination by the San Francisco match (SF match) to become part of the NRMP. This transition altered the timeline of the application process in otolaryngology and potentially affected the applicant pool. Prior to 2006, the interview season for early match was generally from October to December, with the rank list submission deadline in early January. Match notification occurred in mid-January.7 This allowed applicants who did not match to complete a separate application for other specialties, although interview periods often overlapped. Once the NRMP began coordinating the otolaryngology match in 2006, the interview season was delayed to November through January, with the rank list submission deadline at the end of February. Match notification now occurs in mid-March.8

The change from the SF match to the NRMP match occurred as the required general surgery intern year became integrated with otolaryngology residencies, eliminating the need to separately interview for a preliminary general surgery position.9 Since 2006, otolaryngology programs have an integrated intern year, eliminating the need for a separate match. The early timing of the otolaryngology match allowed for applicants who did not match into otolaryngology to apply for a different specialty during the regular match of the same year through the NRMP. Applicants participating in the couples match during the early match likely found it more difficult to coordinate match cities when one partner applied to otolaryngology and the other to a regular match specialty. It is unclear whether the competitive nature or the couples match situation was considered when the match timing was changed.

...

"Over the past 16 years, we have seen an increase in the number of US seniors applying to residency. Fortunately, during the same time period, the number of first-year residency positions in all NRMP specialties increased as well. This rate of growth of residency positions appears to be consistent with the recommendation by the Council on Graduate Medical Education, who recommended increasing the number of first-year residents to 27,000 per year by 2015.4 In the same time frame, the number of unfilled NRMP residency positions has decreased by 55.8%. These positions are being filled by non–US seniors since the overall rate of applications and matches increased while the rate of US senior applications and matches stayed constant. Non–US seniors include prior US medical school graduates and IMG. IMG includes both US citizens attending medical school outside the United States and citizens of other countries attending international medical schools. Data suggest that the IMG portion of this group is filling the additional residency positions. In 2002, 18.6% of all NRMP positions were filled by IMG, while in 2013, IMG matched into 24.8% of NRMP positions. Meanwhile, the percentage of NRMP positions filled by prior US graduates has remained stable (between 2% and 3%). The decrease in percentage of unfilled positions is also due to increased IMG matching.

...

"The advantages of the otolaryngology conventional match are the elimination of one of the interview processes (since the preliminary general surgery intern year is now included), as well as improved ability for couples to match together."

Conference today on Economic Incentives for Gender Parity

I'll be a guest today at a conference that SIEPR is hosting for the Forum of Young Global Leaders, Economic Incentives for Gender Parity.

I plan to speak briefly about some of the difficulties that confront two-career couples in navigating the job market, and how those have evolved in the last half century.


Here's the morning agenda; I understand that there are also breakout sessions in the afternoon.

AGENDA:
9am  Keynote Address:

• Al Roth, Nobel Prize Recipient in Economic Sciences
• Leila Janah, Founder and CEO, Samasource

9:30am  Panel 1: The Future of Philanthropy through a Gender Lens
Leader: Kate Roberts, Co-Founder The Women’s Investment Network and SVP PSI
Panelists:
Jocelyn Wyatt, Co-Lead and Executive Director of IDEO.org

• Pam Scott, Philanthropist and Founder of The Curious Company
• Rebecca Van Dyke, CMO of Facebook
• Patricia Devereux, Executive Director, The Mastercard Foundation
• Jenn Alcorn, Private Donor Engagement for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

10:30am Panel 2: Women in Technology and Social Entrepreneurship
Leader: Soulaima Gourani, 40 under 40, Rising Star and Talent 2014, Top 100 Talent Europe, YGL
Panelists:

• Telle Whitney, President and CEO, Anita Borg Institute, Fast Company's list of Most Influential Women in Technology in 2011
• Leila Janah, CEO Samasource, Entrepreneur's 7 most powerful people to watch in 2014, Forbe's 30 under 30, YGL
• Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished author and journalist, Time’s list of the Top 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech

11:15am Panel 3: Women and Leadership in Global Organizations
Leader: Analisa Balares, CEO of Womensphere, Chair of Womensphere Foundation, YGL
Panelists:

• Susan Athey, Former Chief Economist, Microsoft, John Bates Clark Medal recipient
• Sonita Lontoh – Head of Marketing, Trilliant; Chairman, Indonesian Diaspora Foundation
• Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, CEO, Global Fund for Women; Board Member, CARE
• Rajiv Pant, Chief Technology Officer, The New York Times; YGL
• Lila Ibrahim, President, Coursera; Founder & CEO, Team4Tech; YGL

12:00pm Panel 4: Women and Entrepreneurship
Leader: Deborah Kan, Executive Producer Wall Street Journal, YGL
Panelists:

• Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO, Change.org, Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people
• Shaherose Charania, Founder and CEO, Women 2.0 and Founder Labs; CEOWorld Magazine's list of Most Influential Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter 
• Danae Ringelmann, Founder and Chief Development Officer at Indiegogo; Top 50 Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company
• Miriam Rivera, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for Minerva; Stanford Board of Trustees; Top 10 Corporate Attorneys in the United States by Corporate Counsel Magazine in 2005; Top 100 Women of Influence in Silicon Valley by Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal in 2011
• Randi Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media; Editor-in-chief of Dot Complicated; Former Director of Market Development and Spokeswoman for Facebook 

Near Feasible Stable Matchings with Complementarities, by Nguyen and Vohra

Here's an interesting new paper on couples in matching markets. When couples are present, the set of stable matchings may be empty, but a "small" perturbation of the problem that increases the capacities of some employers and decreases the capacity of others, restores the existence of stable matchings.  (I haven't yet fully absorbed this, e.g. its impact on overall employment...)


Near Feasible Stable Matchings with Complementarities

Thanh Nguyen and Rakesh Vohra

MIT news on the couples match for doctors

MIT news does a good job of science reporting (and of celebrating Parag Pathak)...

Doctor, doctor: Why the job market for married couples in medicine works well

New study in the growing ‘market design’ field of economics explains how a job-market algorithm helps land couples in the same locations.

Matching couples, in the QJE

Our paper on couples has appeared online at the QJE: MATCHING WITH COUPLES: STABILITY AND INCENTIVES IN LARGE MARKETS

Here are the links on Parag Pathak's page, including the links to the original working paper which has some material absent from the published version.

Kojima, Fuhito, Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth, 
Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets 
(Appendix, Computer Programs, older version NBER 16028 with statement and proof of Thm 2)

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, 128(4)


I blogged about it earlier here.

Here's the abstract:

Accommodating couples has been a long-standing issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A stable matching may not exist when couples are present. This article’s main result is that a stable matching exists when there are relatively few couples and preference lists are sufficiently
short relative to market size. We also discuss incentives in markets with couples. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples. 

Matching with couples in large markets: Kojima, Pathak and Roth

Fuhito Kojima, Parag Pathak and I have a paper coming out that suggests a beginning of an answer to the empirical puzzle presented by the fact that the many annual labor matching markets with couples that use the Roth-Peranson algorithm overwhelmingly find stable matchings, even though in principle they might fail to exist.  In large markets with short preference lists and without too many couples, the answer seems to be related to the fact that there remain sufficiently many unfilled positions so that vacancy chains are more likely to end than to cycle.

Here's the paper:
Kojima, Fuhito, Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth, “Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets,” April 2010, revised April 2013, Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming.

Abstract: Accommodating couples has been a longstanding issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A stable matching may not exist when couples are present. This paper's main result is that a stable matching exists when there are relatively few couples and preference lists are sufficiently short relative to market size. We also discuss incentives in markets with couples. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples.

Matching with Couples - Video of my lecture at the Rothblum conference at the Technion

Here's the talk I gave at the memorial conference for Uri Rothblum at the Technion:
Matching with Couples (55 minutes)

Dual career academic couples--some thoughts on negotiations

A dean shares some thoughts on the negotiations and some of the obstacles that face dual career couples, and particularly the second member of the couple to be hired:

Dual-Career Academics: The Right Start

July 27, 2012 - 3:00am

By

Elizabeth H. Simmons

"A typical hire is something that a department has prepared for at length and according to a familiar rhythm: asking to search, reading folders and conducting multiple campus interviews.  By the time an offer is tendered, department members have had numerous opportunities to review the new hire’s credentials, hear the person give a talk, and even speak one-on-one.   In contrast, a partner’s hire is often conducted more rapidly and with fewer opportunities for interaction with department members. 

"In consequence, when the second partner starts his or her job, there may be fewer members of the department than usual who are aware that the hire has happened, let alone who are aware of academic interests they may have in common."

Katie Baldiga defends her Ph.D. dissertation

Defense 1 (Offense 0)

Katie Baldiga and her committee of admirers: Iris Bohnet, Al Roth, Jerry Green (and Drew Fudenberg via skype)
(Alternative caption: Katie B. got her Ph.D.)

The three papers in Katie's dissertation are so wide ranging that she characterizes them together as "Essays in Microeconomics." (I blogged about her experimental paper here.)

A Failure of Representative Democracy (Job Market Paper 1) 
In this paper, we study representative democracy, one of the most popular classes of collective decision-making mechanisms, and contrast it with direct democracy. In a direct democracy, individuals have the opportunity to vote over the alternatives in every choice problem the population faces. In a representative democracy, the population commits to a candidate ex ante who will then make choices on its behalf. While direct democracy is normatively appealing, representative democracy is the far more common institution because of its practical advantages. The key question, then, is whether representative democracy succeeds in implementing the choices that the group would make under direct democracy. We find that, in general, it does not. We analyze the theoretical setting in which the two methods are most likely to lead to the same choices, minimizing potential sources of distortion. We model a population as a distribution of voters with strict preferences over a finite set of alternatives and a candidate as an ordering of those alternatives that serves as a binding, contingent plan of action. We focus on the case where the direct democracy choices of the population are consistent with an ordering of the alternatives. We show that even in this case, where the normative recommendation of direct democracy is clear, representative democracy may not elect the candidate with this ordering.

Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess and the Implications for Test Scores (Job Market Paper 2) 
Multiple-choice tests play a large role in determining academic and professional outcomes. Performance on these tests hinges not only on a test-taker's knowledge of the material but also on his willingness to guess when unsure about the answer. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment that explores whether women skip more questions than men. The experimental test consists of practice questions from the World History and U.S. History SAT II subject tests; we vary the size of the penalty imposed for a wrong answer and the salience of the evaluative nature of the task. We find that when no penalty is assessed for a wrong answer, all test-takers answer every question. But, when there is a small penalty for wrong answers and the task is explicitly framed as an SAT, women answer significantly fewer questions than men. We see no differences in knowledge of the material or confidence in these test-takers, and differences in risk preferences fail to explain all of the observed gap. Because the gender gap exists only when the task is framed as an SAT, we argue that differences in competitive attitudes may drive the gender differences we observe. Finally, we show that, conditional on their knowledge of the material, test-takers who skip questions do significantly worse on our experimental test, putting women and more risk averse test-takers at a disadvantage.

Assent-Maximizing Social Choice with Jerry R. Green, forthcoming in Social Choice and Welfare
We take a decision theoretic approach to the classic social choice problem, using data on the frequency of choice problems to compute social choice functions. We define a family of social choice rules that depend on the population's preferences and on the probability distribution over the sets of feasible alternatives that the society will face. Our methods generalize the well-known Kemeny Rule. In the Kemeny Rule it is known a priori that the subset of feasible alternatives will be a pair. We define a distinct social choice function for each distribution over the feasible subsets. Our rules can be interpreted as distance minimization -- selecting the order closest to the population's preferences, using a metric on the orders that reflects the distribution over the possible feasible sets. The distance is the probability that two orders will disagree about the optimal choice from a randomly selected available set. We provide an algorithmic method to compute these metrics in the case where the probability of a given feasible set is a function only of its cardinality.

Katie is one of the group of job market candidates I blogged about here: Five Harvard candidates for the Economics job market this year (2011-12).

She and her significant other LC solved the two-body problem this year (!), and will be together at The Ohio State University, which is now more than ever a hotbed of experimental economics.

Three more defenses are coming up this week.

Welcome to the club, Katie.

Dual career job search in Southern California

Some institutions are developing to reflect the increased number of two-career couples on the job market. Here's one source of articles, links to university career services with connections to couples, and some job announcements:
HERC: Higher Education Recruitment Consortium

"HERC member institutions understand that employment decisions often involve two careers.
 Get help with your dual career search by registering for job alerts and linking your profile with your spouse/partner."

HT: Alan Benson

Couples on the job market

Some blogospheric debate about hiring couples (centered on law schools, but generally applicable) is flagged by Dan Filler at the Faculty Lounge: here is an argument that it's a bad thing ("cronyism") to make special efforts to hire couples (and also to promote your students, incidentally). And here is a counterargument.

While I'm on the subject, the newsletter of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) published a set of interviews (in Fall 09) on Navigating the Job Market as Dual Career Economists

Two-career couples and economic development (in Denmark)

Someone in Denmark is taking married couples seriously: Get help finding a job for your international employee’s partner

"There is a greater chance your international employee will stay in your organisation if his or her partner is also happy in Denmark. The best way to develop a network and a good social life is if the relocating partner is working during his or her stay in Denmark. Having a job is important for many relocating partners. Many partners are well-educated and bring experience from a previous career.

"If you wish to help your international employee, it is a good idea if your organisation helps the family to clarify how the relocating partner can find a job and to support their job hunt. A good starting point is to direct the relocating family to workindenmark.dk. In the Workindenmark job bank, the partner can find English job ads from Danish companies and create a profile in the cv-bank. You can also advice them to contact their regional Workindenmark-centre. Here, they can get professional help with their job-seeking, free of charge. They can attend seminars on how to write an application and CV which appeals to Danish employers and they can get individual guidance.

"If your organization wants to go the extra step to retain the international employee you can freely join Workindenmark's "Partner Link". Click here to read more about Workindenmark's "Partner Link".

HT: Stephanie Hurder

Dual career couples

Although dual career couples in academia aren't strictly speaking (only) a gender concern, the best collection of resources on academic couples I've found is on a site organized through an NSF program for the advancement of women in science and engineering careers.

It consists of links to reports both on what academic couples do, and on what universities do (or should do) to accomodate them and hire them.  One Stanford report, called Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know surveyed full time faculty at 13 research universities and found that 36% had partners employed in academia. (And of course many other professors are part of two-professional-career households even if their partner isn't an academic.)

So this is a big and growing issue for the academic labor market, likely to play out in different hiring policies, and employment patters for urban and rural universities.

There are obviously some market design issues, as well as strategy issues. For example, there are now legal restrictions on what you can ask a potential employee about her/his marital status. But academic couples also have to decide to what extent to do joint searches that involve/inform the potential employers at an early stage.

The AAUP has just released a set of Recommendations on Partner Accommodation and Dual Career Appointments (2010). Here's an accompanying story from Inside Higher Ed, which outlines some of the contradictory impulses behind the AAUP recommendations (which suggest both that partner hires should not be as adjuncts, nor should they come at the expense of adjunct positions): Doing 'Dual Career' Right.

Here are my earlier posts on couples, including discussion of how the couples match plays out for medical residents (and a link to a recent paper).

Couples match

The University of Alabama at Birmingham magazine (June 2010) writes about the couples match: Match Making--Software Helps Medical Couples Stay Together

(Here's a paper with a more technical description of how the couples match works...

Roth, A. E. and Elliott Peranson, "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, 89, 4, September, 1999, 748-780.,

and here's a paper that's about why it works as well as it does...

Kojima, Fuhito, Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth, " Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets," working paper, April 8 2010.)

Father's day

Father's Day is a great academic holiday, if you think of academics as being concerned not just with ideas and institutions, but with their whole history and earliest conception. Other kinds of coauthors sometimes have difficulty figuring out who did what. But my wife agrees that my contributions were seminal. She was the biggest contributor in the subsequent, germinal stages. The division of labor has been less clear in the happy, fast decades since.

Happy Fathers' Day to all you fathers and children out there.

Promoting young faculty at Harvard

The Chronicle reports At Harvard, Tenure Isn't Just for Old People Anymore (and the issue, they surmise, is two career households).

"For decades, assistant professors at Harvard University knew better than to get too comfortable. After all, they probably wouldn't be staying there very long.
Unlike the typical university, Harvard didn't have a tenure track. Instead, most young scholars spent several years capitalizing on the university's famous name and resources, then moved on to a tenured job somewhere else. Meanwhile, Harvard usually reserved tenure for senior stars with established reputations whom it lured away from other universities.
In the last several years, however, Harvard has changed. Of the 41 people to whom the university offered tenure last year, half started as junior scholars there. The university had been finding it harder to persuade senior faculty members to pick up their families and move, even to storied Cambridge, so it has developed a tenure track and begun grooming those coming up through the ranks."...

"Plucking senior scholars from other campuses worked well for Harvard when the desired scholars had spouses or other partners who didn't work. "It used to be that if you were Harvard, you crooked your finger and people came," says Susan Carey, who heads the university's psychology department.
But over the last couple of decades, as dual-career couples became the norm, Harvard's offers were less compelling. Many senior scholars were unwilling to move if it meant spouses had to give up their jobs.
"The old days when the guy came home and said, 'Honey, we're moving to Cambridge, pack up,' just don't exist anymore," says Lizabeth Cohen, chairwoman of the history department. "We were investing huge amounts of time in senior searches and not getting the yield to make it worth it." "

Spousal Hiring

In The Intricacies of Spousal Hiring, David Bell, a former Johns Hopkins dean writes

"My experience in the dean's office confirmed my impressions as to the need for spousal hiring. Johns Hopkins simply could not have built its faculty without a willingness to create positions for spouses and partners.
In case after case, that willingness was, by far, the single most important factor in recruitment. We could increase a salary offer by tens of thousands of dollars a year; provide lavish research accounts; promise a scandalous number of sabbatical leaves—none of it mattered if it meant that a candidate still faced the prospect of a long-distance commute or a major professional sacrifice by a spouse."