Difficulties in Hiring Professors

The D published a pretty interesting and worthwhile article today about the long, arduous process of hiring tenure-track professors in the two most popular and notoriously oversubscribed departments, government and economics. It also features an amusing quote from government professor John Carey:

Some academics are reluctant to live far from a major city, while others may be concerned by the lack of a viable job market for their spouses, said government professor John Carey, whose wife, Lisa Baldez, is also a professor in the department.

“The spouse-partner thing is the real challenge,” Carey said. “If you find someone who’s sort of a lumberjack that works, but there just aren’t that many professors who are married to lumberjacks.”