Italian academic system disregards scientific merit in faculty hiring processes

Abstract

Professorships in Italy are assigned following public competitions. However, favouritism affects faculty hiring. Researchers lacking clientelistic support remain excluded from academia and are obliged to seek employment abroad or at non-university institutions, or to abandon their career. Do non-recruited researchers have better or worse scientific capacity than those who have attained professorships in Italy? Files regarding the competitions in bibliometric disciplines won by 186 professors in Florence were analysed. An equal number of professors recruited at other Italian universities and scientists who never attained professorship in Italy were randomly drawn from the pool of individuals having national scientific qualification (the prerequisite for professorship) in the same disciplines as each Florentine professor. H-indexes of the year of qualification (T1), of the Florence call (T2), and in July 2021 (T3) were obtained from Scopus. Non-recruited individuals were more likely (Chi-square test) to show a higher H-index than both Florentine (T1 p = 0.0005, T2 p = 0.0015, T3 p = 0.0095) and non-Florentine professors (T1 p = 0.0078, T2 p = 0.0245, T3 p = 0.0500). Fifty-four non-recruited scientists serve in foreign universities, 100 at national/international research centres. The remaining scientists (25 who continue producing despite precarious employment, and seven who have stopped publishing) were as likely as Florentine (T3 p = 0.69) and non-Florentine (T3 p = 0.14) professors to show a higher H-index. Italian faculty hiring disregards merit. A more challenging qualification would limit the access of researchers with lower scientific capacity, and favour those with greater proficiency. As it stands, competition is useless. Once professors obtain permanent employment, they seem less motivated to publish.