Recently the Ivy League has seen an increase of fierce monetary negotiations and offers being topped by other institutions who want to obtain the same "stars."
What are these other colleges stealing from each other? The answer isn't top students, and it's not athletes. It's professors -- and Dartmouth is frequently at a disadvantage.
"It is somewhat like professional athletics," Dean of the Faculty Ed Berger said. "There are stars -- some are home grown, and other universities want to take advantage of that."
Berger said the fight for faculty has been going on for a long time with most institutions hiring their senior faculty laterally, rather than seeking professors right after they earn graduate degrees.
He said the trend of taking professors after they have taught at other universities for a few years has dramatically increased recently.
While lately, raids of University of Pennsylvania faculty have made headlines, Dartmouth has seen a number of its most valued faculty members consider positions at other top universities.
Last May Professor Vernon Takeshita was recruited by Yale University after only two years of teaching at Dartmouth. Takeshita was offered a one-year visiting appointment in New Haven, after which he would have had the opportunity to be put on a track for tenure.
Dartmouth, in an attempt to retain its only Asian American scholar, countered Yale's offer by recommending Takeshita for tenure track as well as a permanent position as an associate professor.
Takeshita stayed, however Dartmouth has not always been so lucky.
This fall, Government Professor Alexander Wendt -- one of the leading scholars in the 'constructivist' branch of international relations -- left Dartmouth for the University of Chicago. A widely respected and immensely popular professor, Wendt told The Dartmouth last summer that he had enjoyed the enthusiasm of Dartmouth students and the rural environment of the college.
So what influenced Wendt's decision to leave Dartmouth for a bigger university?
Wendt said one of his main reasons for leaving the College was the absence of graduate students and graduate programs, which are important to his work in international political theory.
This lack of graduate programs is one of the main reasons that Dartmouth has trouble both luring and keeping top professors, Berger said. Graduate student are often important to professors for their research and other services they provide, he said.
"It is a bidding war, and many factors contribute to who get the 'stars,'" Berger said.
The presence of graduate programs is one of these -- salary is another.
The pay rate is one of the main determinants in which institution the professor chooses to teach at. This is yet another area in which Dartmouth falters, Berger said.
"Dartmouth does not bid very highly in its comparison group," Berger said. This consideration, in combination with the small, rural environment and exorbitant local housing prices all contribute to why institutions such as Harvard and Princeton attract the biggest names over Dartmouth, he admitted.
This intense competition has even hit the highest levels of the Ivy League.
This winter, the community was stricken when former Brown University President Gordon Gee announced he was leaving the Providence Ivy to become chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
Gee said part of the reason was that Brown was not a good fit for him, but others widely speculated about Vanderbilt's large offer, estimated by The New York Times to come close to $1 million.
Yet, even with the fierce competition, the big names do not always get hired. Recently, Yale's Tenure Appointments Committee for the Humanities rejected the appointment of University of Pennsylvania's Professor Paul Guyer.
Guyer is considered to be the foremost expert on Kant in the country, and Yale has a history of strength in Kant studies, however Guyer was rejected by the committee without explanation.
