Journal Article

Navel Gazing: Academic Inbreeding and Scientific Productivity

Grediaga, Rócio, Veloso, Francisco M., Horta, Hugo

2010

Overview

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.

• Publisher: INFORMS,Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• Subject: Academic achievement / Academic profession / Administrators / Applied sciences / College faculty / College instruction / College teachers / Colleges / Colleges & universities / Developing countries / Education / education systems / Employment / Employment practices / Exact sciences and technology / Graduate students / Graduates / Inbreeding / Inventory control, production control. Distribution / Land-grant colleges / Law schools / LDCs / Management science / Operational research and scientific management / Operational research. Management science / Organizational analysis / organizational studies / Policy making / Product development / Productivity / R&D / Research & development / research and development / Research trends / Research universities / Research workers / Studies / Teaching / Undergraduate students / Universities / Universities and colleges / University faculty / University research / Works