Discretisation of academic paths and the concept of relative to opportunity
Academic institutions are aware of the unfairness of processes. In fact, one might claim that academic systems have tried to adapt and accommodate the ecology of human development. For instance, research councils have fellowship discretise the academic career to allow for competition to be relatively ‘fair’ amongst applicants. For example, the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship claims to support
‘…early career researchers and innovators with outstanding potential in universities, UK registered businesses, and other research and user environments including research councils’ institutes and laboratories’ (https://bbsrc.ukri.org/funding/filter/future-leader-fellowship/).
Likewise, there has been the incorporation of the concept ofrelative to opportunity , which aimed to evaluate candidates in light of their achievement relative to the opportunities that a given candidate has had in their career path. The concept of relative to opportunity therefore also aimed to mitigate differences in ecological factors affecting individuals’ careers, thereby promoting fair access to research funding. For example, the Australian Research Council (ARC) has incorporated the ‘Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence (ROPE)’ into funding calls as a way to ensure
‘that all eligible researchers, from universities and the wider research sector, including industry have fair and equitable access to the research funding available through the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP)’ (https://www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategies/policy/arc-research-opportunity-and-performance-evidence-rope-statement).
Both career path discretisation and the concept of relative to opportunity rely upon calculating years post-PhD as an indicator of experience. I shall leave the discussion of the concept of ‘years post-PhD’ for later (see section ‘Years post-PhD: is there a better indicator of career stage?’ below). Here, it is concerning that even with career discretisation and the implementation of the concept of relative to opportunity, the selection criteria relies on subjective assessment of panel members and reviewers – which are humans with their own biases, limitations, prejudices, and cultural background – to judge whether the achievements of a candidate given their career stage and (described) opportunities is outstanding and worth supporting. Given this subjectivity, it is difficult to envisage that the parties involved in this process – with their cultural differences, backgrounds, biases, limitations, and ecological influences – promote a fair assessment of candidates that have themselves diverse backgrounds, biases, limitations and so on. Ultimately, numbers will inevitably play a role, and candidates with a more substantial list of achievements (e.g., more papers) are inevitably selected forward – generating crisis in the academic system (Lee, 2014; Yamada, 2019). Instead, if academic institutions take into account the ecological history of individuals, the assessment can be made (more) fair because the achievements of individuals are judged in light of data, and the achievements of applicants can be judged relative to the expectation from a candidate that has experienced the same overall ecological context. In this way, outstanding achievements are truly standardized.
Here, perhaps an more concrete example could better illustrate the point. In Slovenia, ca 8% of 25–34 year-old with tertiary education possess a PhD while in Colombia or South Africa, this value is lower than 1% (Education at Glance, 2020; https://doi.org/10.1787/69096873-en). With this data, it is reasonable to assume that there are far more opportunities – and support (both social and economic) – for completing a PhD in Slovenia than in Colombia. As it stands, however, academic institutions ignore or leave to the benevolence of panel members and reviewers (which are often from a yet different cultural background] to decide whether candidates from Colombia deserves some sort of encouragement due to the relative condition of their original ecological environment. If, on the other hand, academic institutions were to consider the ecological context (in this case, country of origin) in the selection process for portioning of goods, then applicants that would be classified based on the expectations for a candidate that experienced similar ecological contexts (i.e., a predicted candidate from the same ecological context). In other words, academic institution would standardize the scoring of candidates relative to the expectation for a candidate given their ecological context. Note that this argument does not favour one applicant at the expense of another. Candidates from Colombia do not gain ‘free’ points and candidates from Slovenia are not penalised – that too, would be arbitrary and unfair. In this framework, both candidates are compared against a hypothetical candidate which experienced similar ecological conditions and only then, academic merit can be evaluated directly. It may well be that a candidate from Colombia achieved less than expected. But at least this candidate was judged based on a fair expectation; we judged based on skills, not context.
Critics may argue that the standards for getting a PhD should be similar across the world, and therefore obtaining a PhD in Slovenia, US, UK, Colombia or anywhere should not matter. To this, I have two points. First, even in leading academic countries such as the US, UK, and China, PhD structure varies widely in many ways, including the time span, teaching, training and so on. Thus, it is unlikely that that PhD programmes provide the same opportunities for students around the world. But even if the structure of the PhD candidature were the same, there is an entire ecological aspect of the society surrounding the individual undertaking the PhD that contribute (or discourages) to the individuals’ motivations throughout the degree. In Slovenia for instance, there may well be a social expectation – or at least a sense of normalcy – from the society for those who obtain a PhD [e.g., (Arzenšek, Košmrlj, & Širca, 2014)] whereas in Colombia, obtaining a PhD can be seen as an achievement reserved to the highly gifted (‘nerds’) of the society (this is based on anecdotal experience from the author, who is Latin American) or can lead to emigration of skilled workers to other (developed) countries [see (Pellegrino, 2001) for discussion]. As such, the social context influences the likelihood of any given student to progress to the PhD in the first place, and also the public perception and public policies that support a student to pursue such degree (e.g., less scholarships or funding for research). Overall then, it may well be that the simple fact of obtaining a PhD in an unsupportive ecological context is an achievement in itself, but which might be taken for granted in cultures with more supportive ecological contexts.
Overall, the point is that, academic institutions might be unconsciously skewing the distribution of individuals that are awarded access to distributive goods by overlooking and subjectivizing (i.e., leaving to the judgement of reviewers and panel members) the contribution of ecological factors that have affected individuals’ opportunities during their lifetime. As of now, academic achievement is confounded by arbitrary ecological factors which individuals had little or no control over but that helped or hinder individuals in years prior to the application, making the current selection criteria morally arbitrary and unfair. This process also ignores surmounting scientific evidence from social sciences, child development and psychology literature [e.g., (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Dotterer & Lowe, 2011; Wang, Smith, Miller‐Cotto, & Huguley, 2020)] and therefore can be considered obsolete in many aspects. But can we make academic institutions and consequently, academia, fair?