Academic Inbreeding: A Risk or Benefit for Universities?

Abstract

Academic inbreeding is a recruitment practice for universities of hiring their own graduates as future academicians. Despite its benefits, it may have damaging effects on the academy. From this point of view, this qualitative research investigated whether academic inbreeding brings benefits to universities or poses risks. It was also purposed to determine how academicians define academic inbreeding and experience it in their daily practices. To this end, twenty academicians were interviewed, and the data were analyzed with content analysis technique. Results revealed that while few academicians underlined its benefits, most academicians manifested its risks and negative experiences. Thus, it is recommended that mobility among academic staff should be encouraged.

Understanding the social and political dimensions of research(er) assessment: Interpretative flexibility and hidden criteria

“…Yet, many of our respondents clearly perceived detrimental effects from this hidden hand of personal connection, extending far beyond collegiality towards "cronyism", "inbreeding" and unfair decisions based on who was friends with whom. While "inbreeding", progression to faculty of graduates from the home institution, may be functional in fostering cohesion, stability and capacity-building in developing institutions (Balyer and Bakay 2022;Horta and Yudkevich 2016), broader issues of favouritism, cronyism and unfair promotions are listed by Osipian (2009) as examples of corruption in Higher Education. Inbreeding does seem to be associated with lower levels of diversity (Balyer and Bakay 2022) and productivity (Inanc and Tuncer 2011), and cronyism has been also been found to generally undermine social capital through mechanisms of ostracism within research institutions (Jawahar et al 2021).…”

“…While "inbreeding", progression to faculty of graduates from the home institution, may be functional in fostering cohesion, stability and capacity-building in developing institutions (Balyer and Bakay 2022;Horta and Yudkevich 2016), broader issues of favouritism, cronyism and unfair promotions are listed by Osipian (2009) as examples of corruption in Higher Education. Inbreeding does seem to be associated with lower levels of diversity (Balyer and Bakay 2022) and productivity (Inanc and Tuncer 2011), and cronyism has been also been found to generally undermine social capital through mechanisms of ostracism within research institutions (Jawahar et al 2021). Our respondents also noted experiences of discrimination based on demographics of gender, race and age.…”