Web Site Launched To Aid Academic Couples Seeking Jobs

Although finding a job for the spouse of a recent hire might be called nepotism in other industries, in academia it is often part of the recruitment process.

"We all like to talk about the life of the mind, but the life of the heart is also deserving of a lot of attention," the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, said in a speech yesterday during which he urged universities to focus on dual-career hiring as a way of attracting women and minorities.

For 43 academic institutions, that process just got easier. The Metro New York/Southern Connecticut Higher Education Recruitment Consortium officially launched its Web site yesterday during an event at Columbia University. The Web site allows job seekers to browse jobs at all the member institutions and allows academic couples to complete linked searches.

The chancellor of the City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, said he hoped HERC would make an impending hiring surge easier in what he called a "highly competitive market"

Yale University 's deputy provost for science, technology and faculty development, H. Kim Bottomly, said HERC would have helped her in her own search for a job because she and her husband were both looking for academic positions.