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Academic Immobility and Inbreeding in Russian Universities

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Abstract

The academic productivity of universities depends on academic staff as well as on management structures at these institutions that are able and qualified to provide conditions for productive work, reasonable decision-making, and proper career incentives. However, academic norms should not be underestimated. In a university, as a professional organization, there are both administrative and academic control systems, and the latter is based on academic norms. One of the most important norms is concerned with talent recruitment and its priorities, policies, and practices. A university’s decision to hire or not to hire their own graduates is one of the key decisions: it defines the characteristics and quality of people recruited, as well as how the management of academic teams is structured. For Russian universities, a rather high level of hiring from within (inbreeding) is traditional, and the reasons for it are cultural, infrastructural, and financial. In this chapter, we examine the causes of inbreeding and its consequences in the context of productivity, social norms, and emerging organizational structures. We use data from a set of detailed interviews with top management (vice-rectors and deans) of regional Russian universities collected in 2012. Interviews were focused on employment policies and the causes and consequences of inbreeding.

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... The practice of academic inbreeding is widespread in the country (64% of faculty in Russia are employed by their university of graduation, according to 'Changing Academic Profession' data (Yudkevich, Kozmina, Sivak, Bain, & Davydova, 2013)). Nevertheless, this phenomenon and its consequences have been sparsely investigated, with only qualitative studies and case studies available (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). It is especially important and interesting to evaluate the consequences of academic inbreeding in Russian academia, especially in view of contemporary reforms. ...
... There are several characteristics of the Russian academic system that may explain the lack of effect of academic inbreeding on faculty's publishing and perhaps productivity. The Russian academic system is characterized by high inbreeding and low mobility rates (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. ...
... Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. Unlike many other countries, in Russia most deans and chairs consider that hiring practices should be aimed at the university's own graduates (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). The situation was inherited from the Soviet period: in the Soviet Union it was considered very prestigious for graduates to be hired by their own universities (at least in social sciences) instead of being redirected to other organization, and only the best students would be hired by their universities (Kuzminov & Yudkevich, 2007). ...
Preprint
The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity measured by the quantity and quality of publications, while others demonstrate the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in the studies of different countries and within countries. This variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under-explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty. The research was conducted using the data from the ‘Monitoring of educational markets and organizations’ survey. The results show that there is no significant effect of academic inbreeding on publication productivity: no substantial and robust differences in publication activity between inbreds and non-inbred have been found. The paper finishes with the discussion of possible explanations inherent in the Russian academic system.
... Nevertheless, this phenomenon and its consequences have been sparsely investigated, with only qualitative studies and case studies available (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;E. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Y. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). It is especially important and interesting to evaluate the consequences of academic inbreeding in Russian academia, especially in view of contemporary reforms. Today, the Russian academic system is in a transition period, pressured by the necessity to improve the competitiveness and positions of Russian unive ...
... The Russian academic system is characterized by high inbreeding and low mobility rates (E. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. ...
... by high inbreeding and low mobility rates (E. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. Unlike many other countries, in Russia most deans and chairs consider that hiring practices should be aimed at the university's own graduates (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;E. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Y. Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). The situation was inherited from the Soviet period: in the Soviet Union it was considered very prestigious for graduates to be hired by their own universities (at least in social sciences) instead of being redirected to other organization, and only the best students would be hired by their universities (Kuzmi ...
Article
Full-text available
The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity measured by the quantity and quality of publications, while others demonstrate the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in the studies of different countries and within countries. This variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under-explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty. The research was conducted using the data from the ‘Monitoring of educational markets and organizations’ survey. The results show that there is no significant effect of academic inbreeding on publication productivity: no substantial and robust differences in publication activity between inbreds and non-inbred have been found. The paper finishes with the discussion of possible explanations inherent in the Russian academic system.
... The practice of academic inbreeding is widespread in the country (64% of faculty in Russia are employed by their university of graduation, according to 'Changing Academic Profession' data (Yudkevich, Kozmina, Sivak, Bain, & Davydova, 2013)). Nevertheless, this phenomenon and its consequences have been sparsely investigated, with only qualitative studies and case studies available (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). It is especially important and interesting to evaluate the consequences of academic inbreeding in Russian academia, especially in view of contemporary reforms. ...
... There are several characteristics of the Russian academic system that may explain the lack of effect of academic inbreeding on faculty's publishing and perhaps productivity. The Russian academic system is characterized by high inbreeding and low mobility rates (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. ...
... Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. Unlike many other countries, in Russia most deans and chairs consider that hiring practices should be aimed at the university's own graduates (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). The situation was inherited from the Soviet period: in the Soviet Union it was considered very prestigious for graduates to be hired by their own universities (at least in social sciences) instead of being redirected to other organization, and only the best students would be hired by their universities (Kuzminov & Yudkevich, 2007). ...
Working Paper
The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity, measured in the quantity and quality of publications, while others show the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in studies of different countries and within countries. Such a variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty members. The results, using Russian data from the Changing Academic Profession survey, showed no substantial effect of academic inbreeding on research productivity. Inbred and non-inbred faculty members do not differ substantially in terms of the probability of having publications, or how many, although for inbreds such probability is slightly higher. These results are robust for different operationalizations of inbreeding and measures of publication activity. However the absence of significant differences in the number of publications may not mean the absence of a difference in their quality. The possible explanations and limitations of the standard measures of research productivity are discussed.
... However, usually only internal candidates participate in the hiring process. External candidates usually do not even apply, because they have very little chance of being hired (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Some universities have begun using genuinely open and competitive hiring only relatively recently. ...
... According to the data from the 'Changing Academic Profession' survey (CAP), 64% of all academics in Russia work in the same institution at which they studied for at least at one of the educational levels (Yudkevich, Kozmina, Sivak, Bain, & Davydova, 2013). Usually, Russian postgraduate students who graduated from the same higher education institution at which they study simultaneously conduct their research toward their dissertation and carry out teaching (having a teaching position and assisting their mentor who, usually, invites them to apply to the graduate school and offers them a position) (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). ...
... One other feature of the Russian academic labour market which affects academic inbreeding practice is the low level of academic mobility. It is rather difficult for young faculty to move to another city because of low starting salaries and poor social infrastructure (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). This situation forces them to stay in their home city or the city where they graduated, and try to get a position at that location. ...
Article
Full-text available
Faculty are the main asset of a university and determine its success. The attitudes of faculty toward their institution play an especially important role in the academic profession. This study examines the specific antecedents of affective, normative and continuance commitment of faculty to their university. This study is an online survey of 317 faculty of Russian higher education institutions. The results of the regression analysis showed that being an undergraduate inbred (i.e. working at the university from which one graduated) predicted affective and normative commitment toward the university, while having a post at another higher education institution predicted only affective commitment. Faculty who work at several universities have lower levels of emotional attachment to the primary university.
... The practice of academic inbreeding is widespread in the country (64% of faculty in Russia are employed by their university of graduation, according to 'Changing Academic Profession' data (Yudkevich, Kozmina, Sivak, Bain, & Davydova, 2013)). Nevertheless, this phenomenon and its consequences have been sparsely investigated, with only qualitative studies and case studies available (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). It is especially important and interesting to evaluate the consequences of academic inbreeding in Russian academia, especially in view of contemporary reforms. ...
... There are several characteristics of the Russian academic system that may explain the lack of effect of academic inbreeding on faculty's publishing and perhaps productivity. The Russian academic system is characterized by high inbreeding and low mobility rates (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. ...
... Moreover, this situation is deeply embedded in the institutional environment and is considered to be the norm. Unlike many other countries, in Russia most deans and chairs consider that hiring practices should be aimed at the university's own graduates (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2009). The situation was inherited from the Soviet period: in the Soviet Union it was considered very prestigious for graduates to be hired by their own universities (at least in social sciences) instead of being redirected to other organization, and only the best students would be hired by their universities (Kuzminov & Yudkevich, 2007). ...
Article
The aim of this study is to examine the specific antecedents and consequences of the commitment of university teachers to their university. Academia has specific features that distinguish universities from other types of organizations: universities have the opportunity to hire their own graduates (academic inbreeding); university teachers are able to work in several higher education institutions or combine teaching with work in business; university teachers have the opportunity to combine several professional roles (teaching, administrative work, research, etc.); university teachers have several options to change their job; publication activity is an important indicator of the efficiency and competitiveness of university teachers. This study is an online survey of 317 teachers of different disciplines from several types of state higher education institutions from different regions of Russia. The results of the regression analysis show that antecedents of affective commitment include belonging to a group of insiders (working in university from which they graduated), having an additional administrative position, role clarity, and role conflict. Structural equation modelling shows that an additional administrative position had a direct positive effect and an indirect negative effect (through role conflict) on the affective commitment to the university. Having work experience at another university predicts only a normative commitment to the university. The affective component of commitment to the university was a better negative predictor of the intention to leave the position, profession and institution. No components of the commitment predict publication activity.
... Another major concern in this regard is the correlation between research productivity and academic inbreeding (Altbach et al., 2015;Cruz-Castro & Sanz-Menéndez, 2010;Horta, 2013;Velho & Krige, 1984). In this regard, some studies have reported negative effects of academic inbreeding on research productivity (Horta et al., 2010;Katranidis et al., 2017;Soler, 2001), whereas others have found insignificant or minor differences between inbred and non-inbred situations in terms of research productivity (Altbach et al., 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). ...
... The word inbreeding was borrowed from biology and means "to breed from unions between closely related individuals" and "to develop within" (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016). With respect to academia, several kinds of inbreeding are reported to exist in the context of higher education, such as institutional inbreeding (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015) and network inbreeding (Burris, 2004). In this regard, a major scholar in the field, Berelson (1960), provided the following definition: "academic inbreeding is a recruitment practice where universities hire their own doctoral students after graduation, who subsequently remain at the institution to work for their entire careers." ...
Article
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In this study, the effects of academic inbreeding on individual and institutional research productivity are examined to understand its impact as a recruitment policy. Over the past decade, in particular, there has been growing awareness of the problems posed by inbreeding in higher education. This study aims to expand on this awareness through an analysis of the prevalence of academic kinship in the Turkish higher education system, as well as the effects of inbreeding on the research productivity of academics and on their total research output. Unlike previous studies, the present study tests three distinct descriptions of inbreeding. The analyses in the study are performed on (1) the data records of 88,162 doctorate-holding faculty members’ nationally published articles and internationally published articles publications (Web of Science) from 203 Turkish universities; (2) their international citations; and (3) the projects they managed during the 2020–2021 academic year. Random effects estimator analyses were used the with multivariate negative binomial logit hurdle to account for institutional and individual differences. The findings indicate a high level of academic inbreeding in Turkish higher education. More specifically, the level was found to be 41%, which is one of the highest rates reported in the literature. Moreover, the findings suggest a negative impact of academic inbreeding on individual and institutional research productivity. In this respect, regardless of the field of study, inbred academics have lower number of national and internationally published articles, citations, and project management experiences than non-inbred researchers. In addition, it was found that the rate of academic inbreeding has a significant effect on universities’ research productivity. Given these results, it can be stated that academic inbreeding has a detrimental effect on higher education.
... Между тем при описании траекторий тру-довой деятельности российских академических работников системы высшего образования диф-ференцируются два полярных явления: мобиль-ность, связанная с отъездом за рубеж, и полная немобильность -инбридинг, то есть занятость в одном и том же вузе на протяжении всей ка-рьеры (зачастую даже в том, в котором препода-ватель получил диплом о высшем образовании и степень). Наиболее полно тема инбридинга и его последствий для университетов изложены в работах представителей НИУ ВШЭ Е. В. Сивак и М. М. Юдкевич [23,24,25]). Согласно их иссле-дованиям, низкий уровень трудовой мобильности НПР обусловлен во многом институциональными особенностями академической среды и сложив-шейся академической культурой. ...
... Исследование О. Алиповой и А. Ловакова [26] доказывает, что нет значительного влияния ака-демического инбридинга на публикационную активность производительность публикации на-званных типов преподавателей. В то же время М. М. Юдкевич и Е. В. Сивак обосновывают, что инбридинг в отечественных вузах негативно вли-яет на качество работы подобных НПР: для них характерна более низкая научная и исследователь-ская производительность, инбридов меньше ци-тируют, они больше ориентируются на местный круг общения, чем на внешний мир [24]. ...
... Proj ect 5-100 contributed to a decrease in inbreeding in Rus sian universities, while hiring from within was always a prevalent policy from Soviet times (Sivak and Yudkevich 2015). Meanwhile, leading universities in the country got new incentives and instruments to attract high-quality faculty and researchers from other institutions. ...
Chapter
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A pioneering collection of case studies on the global phenomenon of academic excellence initiatives and how they shape the performance of research universities. Academic excellence initiatives (AEIs)—special government-sponsored programs to improve research universities—have provided billions of dollars to top universities and represent perhaps the most significant effort in the past half-century to jump-start academic research. The contributors to Academic Star Wars, superbly edited by Maria Yudkevich, Philip G. Altbach, and Jamil Salmi, analyze AEIs in nine European and Asian countries, including China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, France, Germany, and Russia, and offer penetrating insights into the successes and problems of these initiatives, as well as into the broader system of higher education itself. Academic Star Wars provides a comprehensive analysis of AEIs across the globe as it seeks to understand the impact of these programs on national higher ed systems. The contributors explore a host of topics, including how the idea of excellence varies across national systems; the lessons to be drawn from the most successful AEIs; the consequences of AEIs, both intended and unintended, for participating universities; and whether AEIs ensure a significant impact on the global standing of national higher education systems. Finally, the contributors offer policy recommendations for national decision-makers and university leaders, taking into account the variety of initial conditions of national higher education systems and the differences in AEI design, scope, and funding.
... 'Academic (im)mobility' in this article should be differentiated from other uses of the term, e.g. Sivak and Yudkevich (2015) where it is used as 'academic inbreeding' (see Dutton 1980). 3. ...
Article
Special Issue on The Politics of Knowledge Production in Africa (With selected papers from the 15th CODESRIA General Assembly) Contents Academic (Im)mobility: Ecology of Ethnographic Research and Knowledge Production on Africans in China Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo..........................................................................1 What Should Globalization Mean for African Humanities and Why? Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi..........................................................................23 Sociology of Knowledge in the Era of Academic Dependency in Africa: Issues and Prospects Oludele Albert Ajani..................................................................................39 Situating African Indigenous Ideas within Conventional Learning as an Impetus for Knowledge Construction in Africa Babatunde Joshua Omotosho.................................................................53 Skills or Credentials? Comparing the Perspectives of Degree- and Non-degree-holding Ghanaian Graduates on the Value of Higher Education Nana Akua Anyidoho............................................................................67 Globalisation, Decoloniality and the Question of Knowledge Production in Africa: A Critical Discourse Olugbemiga Samuel Afolabi..............................................................93 Propos sur un Bandoeng épistémique: l’Afrique, le Sud Global et la production du savoir à l’ère de la mondialisation Germain Ngoie Tshibambe................................................................111
... (p. 261) Yudkevich and Sivak (2015) point to several conditions that must be scrutinized and which can be exemplified by "low academic mobility, widespread academic inbreeding, and insufficient development of the national academic market." (ibid.) ...
Article
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Well aware of the challenges presented by a thorough analysis of the higher education in Russia, Yaroslav Kuzminov and Maria Yudkevich make it very clear in the Preface of the book that their key idea was that “higher education is intrinsically intertwined with everything that happens in society, and thus with various social, economic, and political aspects of society’s functioning.” To this they add when they also point out that, in its turn, the higher education system shapes the intellectual elite by investing in new human capital, by spreading a system of values, and consequently enhancing the capabilities of individuals. As outlined in the same context, the authors focus on the performance of the higher education system with its quantitative, qualitative, and structural components, to which they add a clear explanation of the very design and features of these institutions as they continue to develop and change. The book is organized in 9 chapters, is introduced by a Foreword written by Philip G. Altbach, includes copious notes and references to help the reader fully understand the complexity of issues discussed throughout the volume, in an impeccable translation by Victor Sonkin, with a final revision done by Lisa Unangst.
... Therefore intentional development of mutually complementary areas for outgoing and incoming mobility must be an integral part of operational management in regional universities and a commitment for university https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2019.12.02.19 Corresponding Author: E.V. Neborsky Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN: 158 administration, university faculty staff, and university students. However, for the majority of Russia's universities this goal is unlikely to be attainable (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2014). ...
... The current hiring system in research universities in Brazil, based on public tender and open competition, was designed to prioritize academic merit. However, although the hiring process is highly formal, the process can also influenced, in practice, by a disseminate "localism " ( Sivak and Yudkevich, 2015 ) culture among senior professors. This fact is not a surprise given the small market for newly trained researchers, due to the concentration of research in few universities, and the culture of immobility among Brazilian researchers ( Balbachevsky, 2016;Horta, 2013 ). ...
Article
This paper presents an embracing quantitative inbreeding analyses in the Brazilian higher education system (HES). Several studies were conducted about academic inbreeding in several countries with contradictory results on its effect in research productivity, indicating how controversial this issue is. This is the first comprehensive research based on data from more than 79,000 researchers from all fields of knowledge. We find that inbreeding can be found in all fields of science in Brazil. Results from a robust statistical analysis indicate that inbreds are significantly more productive than non-inbreds in all research publications, except in books. Particularly, we find that researchers that have spent a mobility period, either during doctoral studies or a scholarly visiting position, are more productive than other types of inbreds. The overall conclusion is that there is no evidence to support the detrimental view of academic inbreeding based on scientific productivity. We then discuss possible explanations to our findings and present suggestions of future research.
... The literature also provides some comparative perspectives for high academic inbreeding rates in different countries as seen by Navarro and Rivero (2014) who revealed that the percentage of external faculty in Spain was 5% in 2001 while it was 93% in the USA, 83% in the UK, and 50% in France; Shen et al. (2015) found that the average academic inbreeding rate was 28% in China in 2013 and higher ranked universities had higher rates; in Russia, the average is 60% and top institutions are more inclined to hire their own graduates (Sivak and Yudkevich 2015). In Turkey, the average rate observed for academic inbreeding in educational administration was 26% in 2020. ...
Article
Full-text available
It has been known for some time that academic researchers are subject to diverse relations of production that influence the direction and ultimately the value of their scientific work. In this context, this study examines how the field of educational administration is practiced at higher education institutions in Turkey, how these practices have become socially integrated over the years and how a structurally cohesive core characterizes the discipline's research activity. The study reviews 609 doctoral dissertations concerning educational administration from a longitudinal perspective (1988 to 2020) using a two-tier theoretical path: the role of academic familism and disciplinary cohesion in the field. The findings reveal that academic familism and disciplinary cohesion are interrelated and interdependent. Together they impact the formation of monolithic gendered, epistemic, and academic communities, consolidate gendered and monolithic academic networking, and limit cross-disciplinary interaction in the educational administration field.
... По данным исследователей [7], удельный вес таких выпускников равен 75% и не претерпевает существенных изменений ни для отдельных дисциплинарных когорт выпускников, ни для отдельных типов вузов. Таким образом, в российских вузах доминирует модель воспроизводства собственного кадрового потенциала, что приводит к его консервации и, зачастую, негативно отражается на инновационном развитии высшей школы (этот вывод подтверждается более широкими исследованиями проблемы академического инбридинга) [9]. В России аспиранты вовлекаются в преподавание через кафедру и научного руководителя, к моменту окончания аспирантуры они уже глубоко укоренены в вузовской структуре и не видят альтернатив. ...
Conference Paper
The article analyzes the state of training of highly qualified personnel in graduate school from the point of view of analyzing the first results of the implementation of its new model. The problem of interaction of the education system, the labor market and the social behavior of young people is identified. The main trends in the field of postgraduate training are identified. The search for a new content of the educational program is associated with a modern interpretation of the understanding of the goals and results of the postgraduate program. The main labor markets for postgraduate graduates and the leading competencies demanded by these markets are considered. The problem of academic inbreeding in Russian universities is revealed. The study actualized the need to develop an educational program of postgraduate studies that is adequate to the new conditions of its work and takes into account the goals and needs of all participants in this process, implemented at the intersection of education, science and business.
... 'Academic (im)mobility' in this article should be differentiated from other uses of the term, e.g. Sivak and Yudkevich (2015) where it is used as 'academic inbreeding' (see Dutton 1980). 3. ...
Article
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Since the emergence of China in the geopolitical and economic spaces of Africa, academics have followed Chinese and African people moving in both directions and conducted on-the-ground, cross-border ethnographies. However, academics are not equally mobile. This autoethnography analyses the intersections of ethnography, mobility and knowledge production on 'Africans in China' through a critical exploration of the contextual issues shaping the unequal participation of Africa-based researchers in the study of Africa(ns) in a non-African setting. Based on my experiences before, during and after migration to Guangzhou city, I demonstrate that 'being there,' fetishised as ideal-type anthropology, conceals privilege and racial and power dynamics that constrain the practice of cross-border ethnography in the global South.
... They were unaccustomed to establishing transparent and effective systems of professional recruitment. Academic inbreeding was common practice (Yudkevich & Sivak, 2015) because a large number of faculty consisted of a university's own graduates. To become internationally competitive, universities need to attract the best researchers and professors from all over the world; this is very challenging when there is no tradition of open recruitment. ...
Chapter
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This chapter begins with explanations of the historical transformations and peculiarities of the Soviet higher education system. It describes the Soviet government's interpretations of university competitiveness, which have influenced the current state of the Russian higher education system. Then the chapter discusses the post-Soviet path of Russian universities in their search for balance between the de-Sovietization and Westernization of higher education. The discussion proceeds to outlining the new environment of global competition among universities, shaped by world university rankings and the rapid expansion of governmental policies in higher education. Finally, the chapter describes how the Russian government is reacting to the changing environment and the policies used to enhance higher education competitiveness. We consider, as a case study, the Russian excellence initiative in higher education-Project 5-100-whose basic idea is that at least five Russian universities will be ranked among the world's top 100 universities by 2020. Some lessons for future policies and questions for future research are formulated in the concluding part.
... Russian universities have recently started to believe that faculty members have to demonstrate research accomplishments. Before government efforts to make universities resemble research institutions commenced, a faculty's primary function was teaching, and with high teaching loads being given, that meant people had almost no time for research activities (Sivak & Yudkevich 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich 2017). Although academics were supposed to produce research 1 as well, the requirements were rather formal. 2 ...
Article
We examined the role of peer review in the quality assurance system developed for the regulation of higher education institutions in Russia. Given their negative attitude towards the state’s attempts to increase control over universities, how can the participation of academics in regulatory activity be explained? This essay applies resource allocation theory to suggest that engagement in academic service might depend on an individual’s performance of their core professional task: research. Results indicate that Russian academics who perform relatively poorly with respect to publications and citations in selective journals are more likely to engage in academic citizenship in the form of inspections.
... Russian universities have recently started to believe that faculty members have to demonstrate research accomplishments. Before government efforts to make universities resemble research institutions commenced, a faculty's primary function was teaching, and with high teaching loads being given, that meant people had almost no time for research activities (Sivak & Yudkevich 2015;Sivak & Yudkevich 2017). Although academics were supposed to produce research 1 as well, the requirements were rather formal. 2 ...
... At the same time, academic mobility between institutions in the course of a career used to be extremely low and is still rather limited, restricting the experience of faculty and their professional ties with colleagues from other institutions (see e.g. Sivak and Yudkevich 2015;Sologub and Coupé 2015). So, one might expect rather little cooperation between researchers across different institutions in one country and for articles to be more focused on local practices, experiences and data rather than comparative issues and general policy trends. ...
Article
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We studied the population of articles on higher education published in academic journals by researchers from post-Soviet countries in the last three decades. We found that post-Soviet countries contribute differently to the overall publication output, with only Russia, Lithuania, and Estonia having more than 100 articles in journals indexed in Scopus. Countries also have different publication profiles in terms of articles’ language, topics, methodology, and the balance between articles in local and international journals. In comparison with a sample of international articles, post-Soviet authors publish a substantially smaller share of research articles, and articles about teaching and learning issues, student experience and outcomes, and academic work, but a larger share of policy-related articles and articles about system policy and history. Researchers from one post-Soviet country collaborate much less within their country compared to authors from the international sample, where people collaborate more actively between institutions within a country. At the same time, scholars from different post-Soviet countries do not collaborate with each other. Our analysis demonstrates the disunity of the community of post-Soviet scholars disconnected by national borders.
... Therefore intentional development of mutually complementary areas for outgoing and incoming mobility must be an integral part of operational management in regional universities and a commitment for university https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2019.12.02.19 Corresponding Author: E.V. Neborsky Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN: 158 administration, university faculty staff, and university students. However, for the majority of Russia's universities this goal is unlikely to be attainable (Sivak & Yudkevich, 2014). ...
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... While some countries (such as Germany or the USA) are introducing measures to prevent academic inbreeding (Alipova and Lovakov 2018;Musselin 2004;Pan 1993), it can also make sense that institutions themselves could be made aware of the benefits of recruiting more academics with PhD degrees obtained outside the institution, and also abroad, especially in some disciplines, as this might increase their internationally recognized scientific productivity. However, there is an issue regarding the extent to which universities are willing to change recruitment practices rooted in institutional cultures and dependent on financial resources, and the extent to which public policies can influence this change (Heitor et al. 2014;Sivak and Yudkevich 2015). In Portugal, national measures could be taken in order to reduce levels of inbreeding. ...
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In Portugal, research productivity is nowadays essential for the positive assessment of academics, research units and study programmes. Academic inbreeding has been highlighted in the literature as one of the factors influencing research productivity. This paper tests the hypothesis that inbreeding is detrimental for research productivity, measured through the number of publications listed in Scopus. The study resorts to a database provided by the national Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES), which comprises all academics teaching in all Portuguese institutions in the academic year 2015/2016. The sample selected for the analysis contains all academics with a PhD in Sociology (N=289). The study uses a special regression model for the analysis: the negative binomial logit hurdle. This was necessary given the large amount of academics with no publications or citations in Scopus, which were the dependent variables to assess research performance. The analysis provides separate results for the probability of inbred academics of having no papers/citations, and for the probability of producing more papers/citations than the non-inbred. Findings suggest that academic inbreeding, defined at the institutional level, has no negative effect on research productivity, contrary to what was expected. However, when defined at the national level, academic inbreeding is detrimental for the recognition and the impact of research: academics with a foreign PhD are more likely to have citations compared to academics who obtained their PhD in Portugal. A tendency was also noted that inbreeding might be more detrimental to research productivity in faculties of Economics than in Social Sciences and Humanities.
... Among the other institutional features of Russian HElegacies of the Soviet education systemis the underdevelopment of an academic labor market, as the best researchers are concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg universities and some regional educational clusters (such as Tomsk and Novosibirsk). There is academic inbreeding, when universities hire their own PhD graduates (Sivak, Yudkevich 2015), and low mobility which usually is a one-directional move from regional universities to universities in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. As a result, the academic labor market is almost limited to the internal markets of different universities with very restricted opportunity for job mobility. ...
... О кланах и «имбридинге» в российской науке см., например, в(Sivak & Yudkevich, 2015). 10 О ритуалах советской науки см.(Kojevnikov, 2004;Krementsov, 1997). ...
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Данное исследование опирается на серию революционных исследований и публикаций последнего времени, в которых была заложена основа будущей сравнительной дисциплинарной истории психологии в России досоветского, советского и постсоветского периодов. Представляется целесообразным в сжатом виде подвести некоторые итоги этих исследований в первой части этой работы, а затем, в ее второй части, перейти к обсуждению «сталинской модели науки» в ее актуальной реализации в современной российской психологии 21 века. В заключение высказано предположение, что «сталинская модель», доминирующая в современной русской науке, в частности, психологии, является существенным препятствием на пути к дальнейшему эффективному ее развитию в современных условиях и что фундаментальная реформа не только социального уклада, но и традиций историографии русской психологии насущно необходимы.
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The nature of academic institutions is inherently gendered. This is because higher education institutions (HEIs) do not operate in a void but, rather, are part and parcel of patriarchal social structures. This book offers a comprehensive presentation of the gendered and gendering academic career development. It explores various scholarly roles that academics face throughout their careers and how they are gendered in their nature. The book connects relevant literature on the topic with novel empirical studies to increase the understanding of how gender is played in academia across different roles and different career stages. The empirical context is conducted in Central and Eastern Europe and sheds new light on the gendered and gendering nature in academia in the region. The book also offers propositions on how to undo gendered academia to make it a more inclusive workplace for all. Dedicated to the academic reader employed in HEIs, particularly among those who are involved in the management of such institutions, this volume will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and advanced students in the fields of human resource management, organizational studies, higher education, and gender studies.
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Article Type: Research Paper Background and aim: The effects of academic inbreeding on research productivity in each higher education system can be different. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the research productivity of inbred and non-inbred faculty members in the top three universities in Iran. Materials and methods: This quantitative descriptive study was performed using the scientometric method. The study population included inbred and non-inbred faculty members with the academic rank of assistant professor in the top three universities of Iran in the Shanghai ranking system based on an index of research productivity in three disciplinary areas of technical engineering, medical sciences, and human-social sciences. Data were collected from the Scopus database. Findings: The findings showed that inbred faculties (26%) had more publications than non-inbred ones. Furthermore, the citations and H-index of publications of inbred faculties were 24.4% and 5.1%, which were more than those of non-inbred ones, respectively. Non-inbred faculties compared to inbred ones were more successful in attracting research funding. Inbred faculties (40.26%) were more willing to intra-organizational collaboration and non-inbred faculties (13.54%) were more willing to collaborate internationally. Conclusion: Overall, the results of this study indicated that the scientific effectiveness of inbred faculties was higher than that of non-inbred faculties. Moreover, the rate of obtaining funding for non-inbred faculties was higher than inbred faculties, and eventually, inbred faculties tended to collaborate within an organization, while non-inbred faculties tended to collaborate at the international level.
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en This paper illuminates how three distinct but complementary concepts can be used to explain the prevalence of inbreeding in some contexts and the absence or limited frequency of inbreeding in others. The concepts of internal and external labour markets can be useful in understanding the academic labour market conditions that may support or discourage inbreeding. The concepts of vertical fragmentation of the academic labour within universities and the vertical stratification of institutions within systems can be helpful in understanding why inbreeding may be more prevalent for some categories of academic labour, located within specific institutional contexts, than others. Finally, the concepts of social and cultural capital can be useful in understanding inbreeding in terms of academic hiring decision processes. Résumé fr Cet article examine comment trois concepts distincts mais complémentaires peuvent contribuer à expliquer la prédominance de l’endorecrutement (inbreeding) dans certains contextes, et l’absence ou la fréquence limitée d’endorecrutement dans d’autres contextes. Les concepts de marchés du travail interne et externe sont utiles pour comprendre les conditions du marché du travail universitaire pouvant favoriser ou restreindre l’endorecrutement. Les concepts de fragmentation verticale du travail universitaire et de stratification verticale des établissements au sein des systèmes permettent de comprendre pourquoi l’endorecrutement est plus répandu pour certaines catégories de personnel universitaire, situées dans des contextes institutionnels particuliers. Enfin, les concepts de capital social et culturel sont utiles pour comprendre l’endorecrutement du point de vue des processus de décisions d’embauche en contexte universitaire.
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Resumo Este artigo analisa a endogenia acadêmica nas universidades públicas brasileiras, definida como a prática de recrutamento em que as universidades contratam os seus próprios doutorandos após a conclusão de seus estudos. Nesse sentido, foram utilizados dados dos docentes que atuam em grupos de pesquisa e o número de publicações em periódicos internacionais e nacionais, bem como o número de alunos de doutorado orientados como proxies da produtividade científica e da sobreposição das atividades de ensino e pesquisa. Por meio da aplicação de um modelo binomial negativo logit hurdle, os indivíduos que não são endógenos publicam ao menos um artigo internacional, mais artigos nacionais e possuem menos orientandos de doutorado. Contudo, não é possível afirmar categoricamente que os não endógenos são mais produtivos, uma vez que as diferentes áreas científicas possuem culturas disciplinares e de difusão distintas e o mercado de trabalho acadêmico brasileiro passa por uma fase de transição.
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The study focuses on the issue of gender discrimination in pay among university faculty in Russia, a country with an exceptionally high share of female faculty in higher education. Using a comprehensive and nationally representative survey of university faculty, we found that although women in academia earn considerably less than men, gender inequality among university faculty is lower than in the non‐academic sector. The study shows that gender differences in pay can be mainly explained by vertical gender segregation: women are less likely to achieve senior positions in the university hierarchy, which brings a high wage premium. Another explanation is horizontal segregation, when there is a prevalence of male faculty in Moscow‐based universities, which provide a considerable wage premium compared to regional ones. A decomposition of the gender wage gap shows that slightly more than half of it can be explained by observable factors, while the rest can be attributed to discrimination and unobservable characteristics. Within the unexplained part the major part can be attributed to favoritism towards men and the minor part to discrimination against women. We found some evidence that faculty in research universities, which actively implement performance‐related pay, experience less gender inequality.
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Change management in the field of training and certification of academic personnel implies a reliable information support in the form of statistical and sociological data that enable the monitoring of the effectiveness of the institution of doctoral education. The current system for monitoring the activities of doctoral schools does not fully meet these requirements, thus making it difficult to assess objectively the implementation of doctoral education’s main function – the training of researchers and faculty for higher education. The article attempts to fill this information lacuna by presenting an analysis of the database created by the authors which contains information about the defense of dissertations and research results of PhD students who graduated in 2013 from nine Russian universities over the five-year period after their graduation (N = 1178). Information on the results of each graduate’s research activities was obtained from open sources: the portal of the Higher Attestation Commission, the electronic catalog of the Russian State Library, Scopus and eLibrary.ru databases, as well as the database of the Industrial Property Institute. As a result of our research, it was established that the actual timeframe of doctoral students’ advancement to their academic degree is determined by discipline-related factors. In the sample as a whole, the share of persons who defended their dissertations was 45% of the total number of graduates, which is 1.7 times higher than the share of graduates who defended their dissertations in the course of their studies at the doctoral school. Approximately 90% of graduates defend their dissertations no later than two years after graduation from the doctoral school. The quantitative data of doctoral school graduates’ retention in the academic field are given, with the breakdown by discipline. On average, more than 60% of Candidate of Sciences degree holders continue their careers in academic positions. The obtained data on Russian doctoral school graduates are in good agreement with the results of monitoring doctoral programs’ graduates in Europe and the USA. The results of this work make it possible to take a fresh look at the methodology for diagnosing the effectiveness of university doctoral schools.
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This article investigates careers of early-career academics in the Russian academic system as it strives to improve its position in the global academic landscape. The typology of “boundaried” and “boundaryless” careers is applied in order to analyze careers in Russia. Two types of academics were identified: “connectors” and “conservationalists.” “Connectors” are more likely to embrace research orientation than “conservationalists” and tend to alter their positions in academia based on research reputation in the global professional community, whereas “conservationalists” are oriented at the hierarchies of positions within universities and country-specific academic credentials.
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For most countries it is safe to say that higher education (HE) is the segment of the education system which has changed the most over the past 50 years. Expansion, massification, greater female participation, privatization, the diversification of programmes, and more recently internationalization and globalization processes have radically transformed national HE systems. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), these processes of change have not only been much more abrupt and fastpaced than in the West, but have also run parallel to all-embracing political, economic and social transformations and, in many cases, nation-building. HE policy-makers in the region have been forced to tackle essentially all contemporary challenges confronting western HE systems within a much tighter timeframe and under much greater political and economic strain. HE reform has run parallel to the democratization of political institutions, the introduction of capitalism and, more recently, European integration. To complicate matters, CEE universities simultaneously struggled with the restoration of university self-governance and autonomy, academic freedoms, and the renewal of the academic profession. In numerous cases, HE was also at the apex of complicated national language and identity issues.
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Горелова Ольга Юрьевна - cтажер-исследователь международной научно-учебной лаборатории институционального анализа экономических реформ НИУ ВШЭ, аспирант Института институциональных исследований НИУ ВШЭ. Адрес: 101000, Москва, Мясницкая ул., 20. E-mail: ogorelova@hse.ruПод межвузовской академической мобильностью понимается факт работы преподавателя более чем в одном вузе за карьеру. Согласно имеющимся в литературе данным, мобильность положительно влияет на академическую систему в целом, при этом ее взаимосвязь с индивидуальными характеристиками преподавателей различается в разных странах. На основании данных международного исследования Changing Academic Profession («Динамика академической профессии»), проведенного по единой методологии в 2007–2009 гг. в 19 странах мира и в 2012 г. в России, анализируется взаимосвязь межвузовской академической мобильности с публикационной активностью, распределением рабочего времени и характером профессиональных коммуникаций преподавателей вузов. Показано, что уровень межвузовской мобильности преподавателей в начале 2010-х годов был крайне низким, и в академическом сообществе это считалось нормой. В таких условиях значимой взаимосвязи между мобильностью и характеристиками профессиональной деятельности преподавателей (продуктивность, распределение времени и сотрудничество с коллегами) практически не наблюдалось, а мобильные и немобильные преподаватели не различались по данным параметрам.
Chapter
Some 30 years ago, sociologist Burton Clark sought to illustrate and classify how different national systems of higher education were influenced by three major players: the state, the academy, and the market. In the United States, the market, in terms of students and business interests, was more influential than in other parts of the world. Soviet higher education was as on the other end of the spectrum: a highly state-regulated system, with weak authority by academics and university leaders, with little influence by markets; indeed, within a command economy, the state determined the market. All universities were “cogs” in the central-government machine.
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“Academic inbreeding”—involving the appointment of faculty members who graduated from the institution employing them—is considered a small and peripheral aspect of the academic profession but is quite widespread globally. This paper analyzes the nature of inbreeding and its impact on universities. Data from eight countries where inbreeding is widespread are analyzed in order to examine the perceived impact of the phenomenon on academics and universities. Our analysis reveals that while inbreeding has deleterious effects on universities, it is widely perceived as a “normal” part of academic life—and some positive aspects are evident.
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This article contributes to the literature on academic inbreeding by analyzing its rational, origins, resilience, and options to limit it in two higher education systems (Russia and Portugal) chosen purposively for having more differences than similarities, while sharing high levels of academic inbreeding. Findings show more homogeneity than heterogeneity with regard to the understanding of academic inbreeding as a social phenomenon, its roots, dynamics and role in developing higher education systems. Academic inbreeding is not defined as completely negative but rather fulfills a developmental role, particularly in the early development of these higher education systems, assuming a more detrimental effect later on. Positive and negative impacts of academic inbreeding are discussed, including factors and motivations that contribute for this practice to persist. Finally, three suggestions to curtail academic inbreeding are forwarded: not ending it by decree, fostering internationalization (especially mobility) and implementing transparent recruitment practices.
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В работе обсуждаются положительные и отрицательные стороны практики найма вузами собственных выпускников. Дается обзор эмпирических исследований, анализирующих распространенность и последствия этого явления в различных образовательных системах, а также разницу в поведении и результативности инсайдеров и аутсайдеров. Для иллюстрации феномена выращивания, характерного для российских вузов, используются данные опроса преподавателей и заведующих кафедрами 28 факультетов вузов Санкт-Петербурга, выпускающих специалистов блока «экономические науки». Показано, каким образом проведение политики найма собственных выпускников влияет на стратегии и ценности преподавателей вузов.
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Data from the 1977 Survey of the American Professoriate were used to examine the relationship between origin and productivity and institutional rewards. The analyses indicated that inbred and noninbred faculty were not significantly different on standard measures of scholarly productivity. However, when an adjustment was made for the confounding effects of time allocation, the groups could be differentiated, and inbred faculty were found to be more productive in all areas of scholarly research. Despite the results on productivity, the analyses showed that inbred faculty are paid significantly less than noninbred faculty.
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The formal communication system of agricultural scientists working at two major teaching and research centres in Brazil is investigated with an eye on formulating policies to improve it. To avoid the pitfalls surrounding the use of sources like the Science Citation Index in this area, a sample of the articles actually published by the scientists was used to construct the data base. Results are presented on where the scientists publish, on the content of their papers, on whom they refer to, and on the age distribution of their references. The picture which emerges is one of a fragmented scientific community whose members have only tenuous links with their colleagues in other domestic institutions, and whose work appears to be lagging behind the research frontier in their field. Policies for ameliorating this situation are suggested.
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The practice of having Ph.D. graduates employed by the university that trained them, commonly called "academic inbreeding," has long been suspected to be damaging to scholarly practices and achievement. Despite this perception, existing work on academic inbreeding is scarce and mostly exploratory. Using data from Mexico, we find evidence that, first, academic inbreeding is associated with lower scholarly output. Second, the academically inbred faculty is relatively more centered on its own institution and less open to the rest of the scientific world. This navel-gazing tendency is a critical driver of its reduced scientific output when compared with noninbred faculties. Third, we reveal that academic inbreeding could be the result of an institutional practice, such that these faculty members contribute disproportionately more to teaching and outreach activities, which allows noninbred faculty members to dedicate themselves to the research endeavor. Thus, a limited presence of inbreds can benefit the research output of noninbreds and potentially the whole university, but a dominantly inbred environment will stifle productivity, even for noninbreds. Overall, our analysis suggests that administrators and policy makers in developing nations who aim to develop a thriving research environment should consider mechanisms to limit this practice.
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This study compares the scholarly impact of inbred entry-level law school faculty members with the scholarly impact of noninbred entry-level law school faculty members. The sample includes 32 law schools and approximately 700 entry-level faculty members. By our measure of performance, scholarly impact as measured by citation frequency, inbred entry-level law school faculty members do not perform as well as noninbred entry-level faculty members. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.
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The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the prestige of physical education graduate departments where faculty obtained their doctorates and the prestige of physical education graduate departments where faculty are now employed. Based on previous research in other academic disciplines, it was expected that graduates from the most prestigious departments tend to be employed at the most prestigious institutions; that their proportion declines as the institutional prestige of the doctoral granting institution declines; and that the institutional inbreeding of doctoral graduates in physical education will be the highest among the most prestigious institutions. Subjects (N = 795) were regular resident faculty with earned doctorates who were employed at any one of the 58 highest physical education doctoral degree producing institutions. A multiple regression analysis revealed a significant relationship (.01) between prestige of doctoral granting department and prestige of employing department. Data indicated that faculty positions at institutions ranking in the top 20 were available almost exclusively to graduates from the top 20, and that the higher the prestige of a department the greater the inbreeding of the faculty. Findings clearly supported the “sponsored” model of career mobility patterns rather than the “contest” model.
The Changing Academic Profession
  • Maria Yudkevich
  • Yana Kozmina
  • Elizaveta Sivak
  • Olgai Bein
  • Irina Davydova
Labor Contracts and Economic Incentives for Argentine University Faculty.” In Paying the Professoriate: A Global Comparison of Compensation and Contracts
  • Fanelli Garcia De
  • A Garcia de Fanelli
Russian Higher Education: Salaries and Contracts.” In Paying the Professoriate: A Global Comparison of Compensation and Contracts
  • Gregory Androushchak
  • Maria Yudkevich
  • G Androushchak
Understanding the Pros and Cons of Academic Inbreeding
  • Hugo Horta
The Academic Profession in Russia
  • Brian L Levin-Stankevich
  • Alexander Savelyev
  • BL Levin-Stankevich
The Changing Academic Profession
  • Maria Yudkevich
  • Yana Kozmina
  • Elizaveta Sivak
  • M Yudkevich