Studies on academic in-breeding

MARRYING a blood kin has been considered a taboo. This belief has a basis in science. "Instead of purifying the race," "marrying within the family can even lead to genetically compromised, even mentally challenged offspring." (https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/08/19/opinion/ columns/academic-inbreeding/1906040) Health providers and genetics specialists judge "the overall impact of consanguineous marriage as being negative when assessed in terms of increased genetic risks to the offspring, as opposed to the potential social and economic benefits." However, applying the scientific results on the human race would not always have the same results as those in the academe. Studies on academic inbreeding, also referred to as intellectual inbreeding, show the adoption of this practice as a positive practice — particularly among top universities abroad. While there are also universities where "It is rare to see any particular department with faculty members being dominated solely by graduates of the same university,'' there also are academic departments having "a healthy mix of experts who obtained their doctorates from within and from several other universities."

Academic inbreeding. Academic inbreeding is sometimes called intellectual inbreeding — the practice in academia of a university hiring its own graduates to be its professors. Like geneticists, to some educators, it is generally viewed as insular and unhealthy for academia. Intellectual inbreeding is thought to hinder the introduction of ideas from outside sources, just as genetic inbreeding hinders the introduction of new genes into a population.

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