An assessment of the first “scientific habilitation” for university appointments in Italy

Abstract

Nations with non-competitive higher education systems and with high levels of corruption, are more exposed to phenomena of discrimination and favoritism in faculty recruitment. Italy is a case in point, as shown by empirical studies, judicial reports and media attention. Governments have intervened repeatedly to reduce the problem, with scarce success. The 2010 reforms to the university recruitment system provided that access to the ranks of associate and full professor would now be possible only through an initial ''scientific habilitation'' to be awarded by sectorial committees of national experts. The objective of this work is to analyze the relationship of the recent habilitation procedure outcomes to the actual scientific merit of the various candidates, as well as to other variables that are explicative of possible practices of favoritism and discrimination. The analyses identify the presence of potential cases of discrimination and favoritism.

The role of citation networks to explain academic promotions: an empirical analysis of the Italian national scientific qualification

“…Along this direction, Marzolla (2015) provides a first analysis of the ASN procedure through the computation of some quantitative measures and draws attention to potential problems in future appointments of the ASN. Abramo and D'Angelo (2015) focus on the first wave of the qualification competition with the aim to understand the relationship between scientific merit of the applicant and the performance to the qualification procedure, including variables that can be indices of possible favoritism and discrimination practices.…”

The academic “glass-ceiling”: investigating the increase of female academicians in Italy

“…Despite these efforts, women researchers continue to exhibit lower scientific productivity than men and on a systematic level (Abramo and D'Angelo, 2015;Beaudry and Larivie`re, 2016;D'Amico et al, 2011;Lissoni et al, 2011;Mairesse and Pezzoni, 2015;Misra et al, 2012;Nielsen, 2016;Uhly et al, 2017). This low female productivity seems to be the consequence of a systematic underestimation and minimisation of women's qualifications and abilities in academia which is recognised as the "Matilda effect" (Knobloch-Westerwick et al, 2013).…”

University academics’ preferences for hiring and promotion systems

“…In recent decades, many country university systems have been subjected to policy reforms (Paradeise et al 2009;Dobbins, Knill, and Voegtle 2011;Bleiklie and Michelsen 2013), aimed at steering activities (Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008) and providing greater autonomy to universities as organizational actors (Whitley and Gläser 2014). Among these transformations, some are linked to hiring and promotion and include changes in the employment model for academics, such as the abandonment of civil servant status (Pechar 2004), reforms of the hiring and promotion systems (Enders 2001), the introduction of new evaluation systems (Musselin 2013), the expansion of accreditation (Gornitzka and Stensaker 2014) or habilitation (Abramo and D'Angelo 2015).…”