Legal Commentary

A friend/prawf at another school writes:  Do you know what is ?normal? in terms of how long most schools leave an offer open to a candidate? Is two weeks ?normal? or is that the equivalent of an ?exploding offer??  Seems to me back when I was on the market I got even less than two weeks.  But that was so long ago that now I?m not sure I remember correctly.

My own sense is that the answer to this hinges on a few different factors. The communication of the offer has to be separated from the time at which the person comes to visit the school (with sig other for a sell weekend) and from the time the dean has specified all the numbers and other aspects of the offer that the candidate cares about. I also think the timing of the holidays plays in here as well as other unique circumstances: e.g., did the candidate have a long-standing wedding/honeymoon planned?

Assuming the faculty votes in early December and the dean communicates the offer with all the relevant details (teaching load/package; salary; issues re: trailing sig other) within a week of that, I would think anything less than 3-4 weeks after the full details of the offer have been made would be "exploding." I think "normal" is probably 2 months or more, but fwiw, I'm not sure "normal" is a good practice. (Prawfs/wannabees: please feel free to weigh in with your information so we can have a better sense.) 

Indeed, I'm not sure all exploding offers are bad or "coercive," especially if the candidate is told in advance of doing the interview that such is the practice of the school. The practice itself may not redound to the benefit of the school but barring unusual circumstances, it's not so manifestly unjust as to be condemnable outright. A school's choice in this regard should be driven by good and publicly explainable reasons: if there is only one slot and a few appropriate candidates, that might counsel in favor of shorter deadlines; if there are many slots and it's already near the end of the hiring season, that might warrant greater flexibility. 

I've often wondered about a related problem: ie, how schools should handle the situation where they have a number of spots that they would very much like to fill. If a school has 5 spots, for example, is there anything wrong with making 10 "conditional offers" and informing all the candidates/offerees that the first 5 to accept will get the job? Sure, the school might not get the "best" 5 of this group, but assuming all 10 offerees are good enough, does anyone see anything wrong with that? Perhaps technically, the dean would be conveying a "letter of intent" rather than a real offer, but everyone would know what the score is. Thoughts?