The fact that these are tenure-track jobs is another lure, in a tight nationwide market. Many institutions are increasingly replacing retiring tenured professors with temporary adjunct professors, lecturers and even graduate teaching assistants. Although the four couples cost the college a bit more in perks and support, Mount Holyoke sees the arrangement as beneficial as well, Sutherland said. The college gets twice the expertise to serve on mandatory college committees, to advise students, to work on research or simply to boast about. In a way, the institution ends up paying a lot more, but the benefit is we have these two brains and the students have the benefit of these two.
Job sharing among professors is still a fairly rare occurrence nationwide.
But in a recent article, the Chronicle of Higher Education said that anecdotal evidence shows the practice on the rise, especially at small institutions in rural settings like Oberlin College, which has eight shared appointments, and Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., which has seven. Undoubtedly, there are drawbacks for the couples, such as sharing a salary between two people. In addition, people sometimes forget that the couples are supposed to take the place of one person, not two. Salter said she and Leithauser have a total of more students to advise than other professors with conventional appointments.