Three top Obama economic advisors have already departed. At the CEA, Goolsbee was named chairman to replace Christina Romer, who returned to teaching at the University of California at Berkeley last September. National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag also left the administration last year; Summers returned to Harvard University and Orszag is now vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup Inc.
University Leave
The University of Chicago, according to its faculty guide, allows tenured professors a one-year leave and requires them to petition for additional time away from the university, which has ties to more than 80 Nobel laureates. Goolsbee, whom Obama nominated as CEA deputy at the start of his term, has already received dispensations from the university and is now in his third year of leave.
A university spokesman, Jeremy Manier, declined to comment on an individual professor's petitions.
Some universities are more lenient than others in requiring that their professors return to teaching duties. Stanford University allowed former national security adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to return to her teaching post after eight years in the George W. Bush administration.
"It varies by institution," said Cecilia Rouse, who served with Goolsbee on the CEA before returning to Princeton University in February. "The longer you're gone, the less you're doing the core work that you were hired to do."
A return to academia might translate into a salary increase for Goolsbee, who has three children. In his last year at Chicago, he earned $465,000, according to federal financial disclosure reports. Goolsbee's salary as CEA chairman is $191,300 a year.
Goolsbee earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from Yale University and received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to the University of Chicago's website. He joined the Booth School of Business, where he has focused on the rise of Internet commerce, government policy and taxes, in 1995.