A methodology to measure the effectiveness of academic recruitment and turnover

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to evaluate the effectiveness of academic recruitment and turnover based on research performance, applied to Italian universities, with implications for improving research quality and fairness.

Contribution

It presents a novel methodology for measuring recruitment and turnover effectiveness in academia, linking these metrics to overall research performance.

Findings

Positive correlation between recruitment effectiveness and university research output

Monitoring recruitment can help reduce favoritism in hiring practices

Method applicable to other countries with national research assessments

Abstract

We propose a method to measure the effectiveness of the recruitment and turnover of professors, in terms of their research performance. The method presented is applied to the case of Italian universities over the period 2008-2012. The work then analyses the correlation between the indicators of effectiveness used, and between the indicators and the universities' overall research performance. In countries that conduct regular national assessment exercises, the evaluation of effectiveness in recruitment and turnover could complement the overall research assessments. In particular, monitoring such parameters could assist in deterring favoritism, in countries exposed to such practices.