Pixel International Conferences

During the last 15 years, achieving the title of Academic Doctor - awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) - has become critically important to the projected carreer path of a senior academic, and the purpose of this paper is to offer empirical evidence against the use of non-differentiated, and arguments for discipline-specific academic promotion policy in Higher Education. The official, large-scale - but totally anonymized - biographical database of the Academy reveals gignificante differences in personal career routes in different disciplines.

Moreover the life-time intra-university earning of senior academics in their late career in particular scientific disciplines seems to be negatively related to the availability of contemporaneous extra-university (public or private sector) income opportunities. One way to counter this imbalance may be for universities to be given the responsibility to determine themselves the criteria necessary for any particular discipline to develop institutionally - and especially to make their own decisions on awarding professorships.

(Empirical research is still in progress)