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?