My wife is looking for a faculty position. It seems its not so easy to get a position in biology though she is doing postdoc at top 5 genetics programs in USA. I am wondering if I can offer a school funding equivalent to her pay for 5 years plus some more for research? I am wondering if good schools will be interested in it? Why I want to do is because at least my wife will cool down and will live a normal life!
2 Answers
If I may paraphrase your question, it sounds like you would like to use money to tilt the playing field of a faculty search in your wife’s favor. You would like to know if your plan can work.
Sadly for you, but happily for our society and the health of our academic institutions, this has zero chance of working. Faculty positions at respected universities are offered based on merit - that is exactly why those places are respected in the first place. If your wife has what it takes to get a job offer, she will get it without the need for any subsidies. If she doesn’t, she won’t get it with or without your subsidy offer. At all US universities where people I know and respect work, the only conceivable reactions to your offer would be bafflement at your cluelessness, if not outright derision and anger at your presumption to be able to influence their hiring process by offering money. Conversely, any institution that would seriously entertain your offer (and I suppose there may exist some third-rate, cash-strapped universities that might) is one where I would not advise your wife to take a job.
To be clear, even respectable institutions may put a price tag on their reputations. If you were to offer, say, a donation of 50 million dollars conditioned on your wife being offered a faculty job (you’d better ask for her to get it with tenure in that case), and your wife was reasonably well-qualified, I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing that there are departments that might find such an offer tempting. A university can do a lot of good things with such a large sum of money, probably enough to offset the risk of any reputational harm they might suffer. But five years’ salary and change? That’s a complete non-starter.
Anyway, good luck to your wife in her job search.
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1Even if the principles you say sound good, they are just that: principles. In some places they are not even applied, or have exceptions. One just has to search "two body problem" on this website to find examples...– user9646Aug 19, 2018 at 7:25
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3So, a partner of a famous professor was never hired by a first-class USA University to solve their two-body problem? Aug 19, 2018 at 8:15
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@DmitrySavostyanov The difference between the "two-body" problem and the OP's question is that the hiring of the (possibly second-choice) partner was bought by the academic excellence of the famous researcher, not by their deeper pockets. Assuming the goal of academia is excellence, such a barter may be an appropriate price to pay, but just funding an isolated position for a (possibly sub-par) researcher is not (whereas, again, if a whole high-class institute is funded as side effect, the institution may again consider it a "fair price"). I think this is the point of Dan Romik's response. Aug 19, 2018 at 9:22
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@CaptainEmacs Since "academic excellence" is measured by Universities almost exclusively based on funding and student fees the researcher can attract, it's not easy to see the difference sometimes. Aug 19, 2018 at 10:06
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@DmitrySavostyanov The actual excellence generator are publications in good venues. Funding is a consequence of the latter. I agree that it is not the most objective of measures, but clearly a criterion that cannot that easily be bought into. Aug 19, 2018 at 11:14
I have to admit that I'm just guessing a bit here but it would seem to be unusual, at least, to offer a grant to fund a specific person. There might be rules prohibiting it.
However, a possible alternative for you might be to create a foundation for research along with your wife and have the foundation seek an association with a research university to carry out the goals of the foundation. Your wife would be a natural participant in that case. The cost would probably be greater, however, as you would need to bear some, at least, of the other costs of the research itself.
Creating a foundation is a legal process and it interfaces with tax law, so you need an attorney to give you advice. But if you have the funds to do what you suggest, it may not be a reach to do more and create something that continues. Depending on the results of the foundation work, it may be that your spouse could, over time, move to a traditional position or stay with the foundation.
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Thanks for the response. I think instead of looking for a faculty position I am wondering if universities offer PI positions which are more suitable for this? So that I do not disturb the level playing field as other people are worried about. I personally think that society is never on a level field to start with but at least I think I should not make people angry about what I do. Who I should be taliking at university? Departments or the university foundations? Aug 20, 2018 at 1:18
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@NachiketPatil, I have no good advice for that, but at some level you will need to talk to the university itself, I think. But I don't know where it is best to start.– BuffyAug 20, 2018 at 11:15