The two-body process: Part 2 - The soft-money plan

Soft money is just what it sounds like. It is salary that is not definite. To survive only on soft money you have to be a good writer, an innovative scientist, and a general all around academic superhero. Plus you have to have a bit of luck. There has to be money at the granting agencies, it has to be in programs relevant to your, now widely diverse, research program, the money has to be enough to support you and the research.

Many people have long and very successful careers on soft-money, and for two bodies, it is often a good solution. One guaranteed salary can ensure you get through a "lean funding cycle", which can be for a couple of months or so, and sometimes you can supplement by teaching a class here or there.

The problem with a soft-money position is that there can be a long lag from the time you submit a grant to the time it's awarded (6-18 months), which means, when you are just starting out, there is a minimum of 6 months without salary, assuming you have a proposal ready to submit on day 1, so realistically you are looking at a year of no pay. It's also not an easy road for a young academic for several reasons.

1. You don't necessarily have a track record to help you get a grant (the old chicken and egg problem)
2. You are most likely only going to be able to get a month or two salary from every project (sometimes more, but at the start that's really all there is), which means that you could easily end up spliting your time between 6 projects to gain a full time salary.

In my limited experience, most trailing spouses pursuing the soft-money plan are given some help from the University to help carry them through that early phase, such as a half time salary, or a per class teaching compensation. At the very least, they are given a gratis appointment that will allow them to pursue the soft-money option with some legitimacy. A PhD at large can't just submit a grant to NSF, it has to come from an organization of some type.

My University had already adademently refused to provide financial support in any way. In fact, two weeks after my dear husband asked about teaching opportunities, and was told there were none, a full color ad appeared in the local paper looking for instructors in the department in question! His formal application never received a response.

So there we were four months in, and hub was unemployed, continuing to apply to local businesses, the state agencies, etc and not receiving a single response. It took a little doing, but he was able to convince a department to give him an adjunct appointment for one year, and keys to an office in the attic where he could work on trying to get a salary for himself. Two months later, the University had actually managed to process the paperwork and he was off to the races!

Optimism was running high in our house. That was 10 months ago.