The myth of the overproduction of academic titles

The previous post stated something curious: the Education Minister said that the number of academic titles has increased 10-fold over the last two years, but that data did not exist to show that. This ought to be an either-or statement: either the number went up 10 times OR we don't have the data in which case we wouldn't be able to tell whether and how much the number of academics has increased.

Luckily data exist here. And the data show a very different picture. According to this graph, there is no 10-fold increase. The increase is only 1.7 times in 2012 relative to 2009 and most of the increase is due to the larger number of promotions to professor. The number of new "docents" in 2012 is comparable to the number of promotions done under the old law. The number of new "professors" in 2012 is 3 times higher than in 2009, if the 2012 data from the newspaper article are even true, and it could be entirely due to a backlog of delayed promotions under the old law - presumably the scientists promoted to professor received their docent titles under the old rules. There is hardly a sign for "swarming" of the academic titles - if the number of new docents was dramatically higher, this would be a concern. And since the demographic crisis is only now starting to hit the "docent" age group, no correction is needed for the population pool. I wish official data did exist for the post-2010 years in order to determine the growth trends following the new law.

I don't mean to defend the promotion of undeserving people up the academic ladder, but a critique based solely on the number of promotions in unjustified. The general impression that there were many more promotions following the 2010 law is just not based in reality, according to the existing data. And any motion to return to the centralized system of awarding academic titles based on this made-up argument is probably largely nostalgic.