Careers of young Polish chemists

Abstract

Typical young Polish scientist is an alumnus of doctoral studies at the same university and department where he/she completed his/her Master degree. The career is continued by receiving a habilitation at the same university and department. Then a holder of habilitation is promoted to a tenured position at the same university and department. Detailed analysis of scientific careers of 154 recent Ph.D. recipients and of 16 habilitation candidates in chemistry from University of Warsaw is presented. More than 96 % of the Ph.D. theses were results of doctoral studies. A typical doctor is Polish citizen (>98 %), alumnus/alumna of the University of Warsaw (>85 %), holder of Master degree in chemistry (88 %) who joined the Ph.D. program at the same university directly after having completed his/her Master degree, and completed the Ph.D. program 5.5 years after completion of Master degree. A fraction of recent female Ph.D. recipients in chemistry (61 %) is very high as compared with the corresponding fractions in other countries (e.g., USA), but it is still substantially lower than the fraction of female Master degree recipients. In recent habilitation candidates, the female ratio is 50 %, thus relative male dominance is observed at higher levels. At least one-third of the recent Ph.D. recipients were employed by the same university, where they received their Ph.D., while the fraction of the recent Ph.D. recipients employed by other universities in Poland was below 5 %. High degree of academic inbreeding is due to the legal system in Poland, which (nominally) is designed to prevent academic inbreeding, but the regulations can be easily circumvented. Over 10 % of the recent Ph.D. recipients found post-doctoral positions abroad, chiefly in EU countries and in the USA.

The role of academic inbreeding in developing higher education systems: Challenges and possible solutions

“…However, the outlook on policies to curtail academic inbreeding was remarkably similar between the Russian and Portuguese experts. There was a complete aversion to the idea of terminating academic inbreeding by decree, which was understood as potentially more detrimental than beneficial (terminating academic inbreeding by decree is also problematic, as the decree regulations to prevent this practice can always be circumvented; see Kosmulski, 2014 regarding the case of Poland). Instead, it was suggested that policies strongly supporting internationalization and brain-circulation could be critical in changing mentalities and in promoting the integration and dissemination of novel ideas (Heitor et al, 2014).…”

Academic inbreeding and choice of strategic research approaches

“…It consolidates power structures benefiting often senior academics, thus providing a powerful incentive for the practice to be maintained (Godechot & Louvet, 2008), and becomes understood as part of the 'normal' academic life (Altbach et al, 2015). Legal drastic measures to curtail the practice have been enforced in some countries, with varied degrees of success (Kosmulski, 2015), but the main challenge has been one of changing institutional cultures, and public policies promoting change of mentalities and behaviours through national and international mobility schemes have been suggested as a strategy that may take longer but be more effective (Horta & Yudkevich, 2016;Tavares et al, 2019).…”

The closed academy? Guild power and academic social class

“…Consequently, they may find themselves having to move around different institutions to 'get ahead'. Inherently mobile, they are unlikely to amass the prestige and valued capital required when compared to their relatively immobile guild-route counterparts, which may play a not insignificant part in the prevalence of academic inbreeding among the 'top', elite institutions (Altbach et al, 2015;Horta et al, 2010) in many nations, including Argentina (Rabossi, 2015), Poland (Kosmulski, 2015) and Spain (Cruz-Castro & Sanz-Menéndez, 2010;Rocca, 2007). Bourdieu's (1977) concept of the habitus provides a way to analyse the social world and social practices, to explore the effect of this 'guild' membership in academe.…”