Academic Inbreeding in Ukraine

Abstract

To the best of our knowledge, academic inbreeding has never been a focus of attention among either Ukrainian academics or policy-makers, so this chapter is the first attempt to discuss academic inbreeding in Ukraine. High levels of inbreeding (about 50 percent) in Ukrainian universities are caused both by a deeply rooted tradition of networking and by current day factors, such as unified salaries (i.e., little differentiation in salaries across universities), high corruption rates, and the dependence of university funding on the quantity of students rather than quality of education and research. We believe that academic inbreeding in Ukraine is not a problem in itself, rather, it is a consequence of deeper problems in the education system, namely, its high centralization and rigidity and low levels of competition between universities, students, and faculty members (as known from the economic theory, insufficient competition lowers both product quality and production efficiency). Besides, academic inbreeding is only a part of a larger phenomenon, which can be called the “preference for insiders.” Thus, to get a university job, the crucial thing is to be “recommended” by someone (e.g., by a current faculty member) to the people making hiring decisions. And studying at a university is just one of the ways to get to know a person who could provide such a “recommendation.”