RECRUITMENT POLICIES IN SPANISH UNIVERSITIES, A CASE STUDY: TEACHING AND RESEARCH QUALITY

Abstract

Spanish public universities are well known for their recruitment practices, primarily based on endogamy. Usually, individuals develop their academic careers in the university where obtained their Doctor degree. However, the media, and the society, seems to show a consensus against this recruitment policy, as can be seen in articles published in some of the most relevant Spanish newspapers (El Pais 12/9/2016 “La evolucion de la endogamia…”; El Mundo 6/3/2017 “La comunidad de Madrid…. ley que acabe con…fichen a sus propios alumnos”). Usually, universities consider research and teaching activities as their main tasks. However, those activities could be complementary or substitutive. Research activities allow faculty to reach the frontier of knowledge, and therefore to know what is more relevant to teach to students. However, research activities are time-consuming and teachers focused on research might spend less time and effort on teaching activities than those focused on teaching. Spanish universities avoiding the recruitment of their own Doctors usually hire new faculty from high-quality doctorate programs and these candidates focus their effort on research activities. Therefore, if research and teaching activities are substitutive, this recruitment policy could deteriorate teaching quality at these universities. However, previous articles analyzing research and teaching quality found mixed results. The object of this article is to empirically study whether research quality increases and teaching quality deteriorates when universities hire faculty from high-quality doctorate programs who focus on research activities. We analyze the Department of Business Economics of Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) from 2009 to 2017. This department changed its recruitment policy more than ten years ago, avoiding the recruitment of their own doctorate students. Open positions are posted in the Spanish Job market of Doctors in Economics and Business. In this market, the main institutions are business schools, and a few public universities, such as Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Using several control variables, such as age and the specialization area, we analyze whether there are clear differences in teaching quality and research quality indicators depending on whether faculty members obtained their Doctorate degree from UIB. We find no statistically significant differences in terms of teaching quality, and worse research quality indicators for faculty members with UIB Doctorate degrees. Our research contributes to the literature on the relationship between research and teaching quality, providing further evidence on the complementarity of both activities, even when we measure teaching quality only with students evaluations (probably biased by student marks). Relevant difference respect to previous articles is that our analysis is through the recruitment process. When we analyze the direct relationship between research and teaching quality, our results provide some weak evidence of a negative relationship. Furthermore, our contribution is especially relevant to the public debate on the recruitment policies in Spanish universities, providing evidence supporting that forbidding the recruitment of the own doctorate students in order to hire faculty focused on research does not have to deteriorate teaching quality, and indeed may increase research quality.