Academic endogamy in Brazil and its influences on faculty productivity and collaboration

In most higher education systems, the practice of a university hiring its own alumni is rarely dealt with. Commonly referred to as "endogamy" or "academic inbreeding", this has become part of some countries' academic culture, while others have proactively adopted policies to control for it and now experience large scholar mobility across institutions. Whether professors end up working for their alma mater for personal preference, structural limitations, or both, policies are better suitably contemplated and enforced once discrepancies in the academic job market are properly understood. Aiming at comprehending the Brazilian higher education academic job market, chapter 2 analyzes a large longitudinal database of active professors linked to graduate programs in Brazil. It describes not only the degree of academic endogamy in the system, but also the institutional and geographical characteristics which are associated with it. By looking within the faculty body of each university, a national ranking of institutions is established based on the highest degrees of endogamy. Finally, a regression model is adopted to identify characteristics that associate with such practice. Although at only 23% nationwide, results show the rate of endogamy significantly differs among distinct types of institutions, fields of knowledge, states, and university ranking tiers. This is especially true when analyzing elite research universities where such practice can amount to up to 70% of the faculty body. This analysis provides further evidence that endogamy is most likely to be found in established elite research institutions. These also happen to be the main providers and most prestigious consumers of the well-trained local academic workforce, supporting the conclusion that both internal and external factors could be influencing the high concentration of alumni scholars at prominent alma maters. Considering the shared characteristics of higher education systems, this trend ought to be similar in other young and developing systems worldwide. For decades, researchers have explored why academic endogamy happens and how it affects scientific production. Although consensus remains elusive, some studies associated endogamy with lower academic performance. Alternatively, external exposure seems to be correlated with higher research quality. Consequently, when measuring the effects of endogamy, authors should account for academic inertia as well as the different types of mobility. In chapter 3, a large longitudinal database on the Brazilian higher education system is used to measure the effects of endogamy and mobility on scientific production. In particular, this chapter examines whether types of scholars--such as those who never leave their doctoral institution ("Homegrown") or those that travel abroad to return later ("Adapted")--show differential results. Furthermore, it measures the changes in scholars' productivity when controlling for the distinct types of academic mobility throughout their careers. Results suggest that information about how mobile an academic before and during its career is relevant when estimating the effects of endogamy on academic productivity. Another interesting finding is that international academic experiences are correlated with higher likelihood of publishing at more prestigious journals. As shown in chapter 2, Research universities in Brazil commonly employ alumni as faculty members. Previous studies have measured the effects of endogamy on scientific production. Nevertheless, little is known about how it influences research collaboration. An environment with high academic endogamy would be expected to be rich in shared characteristics, or homophily. Consequently, these networks could be less welcoming to scholars trained at other universities. Such behavior can hurt opportunities of establishing ties with non-redundant contacts and limit the construction of new ideas. Chapter 4 collected data on research collaboration among 5,230 scholars in the University of São Paulo between 2000 and 2019 to understand how a network with high academic endogamy is structured, to identify if academic collaboration is more commonly found among those who share endogamy status, and to analyze if the likelihood of tie formation is distinct among native and non-native scholars. Results show increased collaboration over time. However, for both native and non-native scholars, ties are more likely between people with the same endogamy status. Furthermore, over time non-native scholars become less heterophilous, suggesting this institution could be missing out on opportunities of exploring non-redundant scholarship among its own faculty members

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Carnoy Martin 
McFarland Daniel (Daniel A.) 
Guimarães Jorge Almeida 
Bettinger Eric 
Loyalka Prashant