نقش تحرک دانشگاهی در توسعه سیستم های آموزش عالی: چالش ها و راه حل های ممکن  The role of academic inbreeding in developing higher education systems: Challenges and possible solutions

1. Introduction Academic inbreeding has long been seen as detrimental to scholarly activity, scientific output and the fostering of networks (Pelz and Andrews, 1966). It has a negative connotation since the beginning of the last century, and it remains the same today (Elliot, 1908; Inanc and Tuncer, 2011). Nevertheless, high rates of academic inbreeding are found in developing higher education systems (e.g., Malaysia) and in mature higher education systems, particularly in the most research-intensive universities (e.g., Japan) (Horta et al., 2011). The practice is present in distinct geographical regions across the world and in systems with widely different development paths (Tavares et al., 2015; Sanz-Menéndez et al., 2013; Padilla, 2008; Yamanoi, 2005; Bleiklie and Hostaker, 2004; Smolentseva, 2003). The fact that academic inbreeding is present in such a variety of higher education systems with apparently independent systemic characteristics, development stages, paths and other features is of interest to researchers and policymakers alike. It raises the question: what explains the emergence and prevalence of academic inbreeding in higher education systems? Two issues are inherently associated with this question. The first issue relates to the conceptual dialectic found in the research literature regarding what should be considered as academic inbreeding and what should not (Horta, 2013; Berelson, 1960; Caplow and McGee, 1958). Several definitions of academic inbreeding found in the literature (e.g., Goudechot and Louvet, 2008) offer different meanings leading to altered understandings of the same phenomena and resulting in mixed results when the practice is empirically analyzed (see Horta et al., 2010). The understanding of academic inbreeding as a concept and phenomena is important for higher education researchers, policymakers, and academics to minimize the “dance in the dark” between researchers themselves, and between the research and policymaking spheres (see Klemperer et al., 2001). The second issue relates to the benefits and problems raised by academic inbreeding. The empirical literature has been mostly seen academic inbreeding as damaging to academia (Horta et al., 2010; Inanc and Tuncer, 2011), but what are the possible ways to constrain this practice or to limit it to the level where most of what it is drawn from it is beneficial? These are the questions that this article focuses on. Its findings add to the literature on academic inbreeding and aid further reflection on the issue by researchers and policymakers. e issue by researchers and policymakers. The analysis is focused on the higher education systems of two countries: Russia and Portugal. Both have high rates of academic inbreeding (see Tavares et al., 2015; Smolentseva, 2003), but substantial differences in size, structure and development path. The similarity in the incidence of academic inbreeding together with the dissimilarity of the other characteristics offers a methodological sound base to discern the rationale behind academic inbreeding in both higher education systems (see Maxwell, 2004). The different size is particularly important since a recent study associates shifts in academic inbreeding rates to national academic market size and its dynamics (RIHE, 2009).