Victor Karady

CNRS (Paris), John Wesley College and Central European University (Budapest)

Author. Victor Karady (1936) is emeritus research director of the French CNRS and emeritus recurrent professor at the History Department of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. He has made a dual career of historical sociologist at the French CNRS and, since 1992, at the CEU. His most recent publications include : Ethnic and Denominational Inequalities and Conflicts in Elites and Elite Training in Modern Central-Europe, Budapest, John Wesley Publisher, 2012. http://mek.oszk.hu/10900/10980. With Peter Tibor Nagy) eds., The numerus clausus in Hungary. Studies on Academic Antisemitism in Inter-War Central Europe, Budapest, Pasts Inc., Centre for Historical Research of the CEU, 2012. http://mek.oszk.hu/11100/11109

The Academic Profile of Doctoral School Staffs in Hungarian Universities in the Social Sciences and Humanities. A Comparative Study of Disciplines with Special Reference to Educational Science (2000-2010)

Abstract. The paper is grounded in the quantified exploitation of a large scale (N = cc. 14000) prosopographical data bank of practitioners of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Hungary defined by their institutional position in a public research agency, a university, a college of higher educational or as author of books and studies in specialized SSH journals listed in an overall bibliography of SSH publications (1960-2010) by the staff of the Budapest Municipal Library. The focus is not on the whole available prosopographical data bank, but only on staff members of doctoral schools attached to universities in the early 21st century (cc. 2000-2010). Various ‘positional’ properties of the teaching personnel of doctoral schools are systematically compared hereby following their discipline, gender, academic qualification, scholarly productivity as well as a combination of major collective markers (like age, residence, size of publications, notably publications in foreign languages). For reasons of economy of space and since there is practically no significant publications available on the problem area in English or other international languages, the study includes only summary bibliographical references.

Keywords : social sciences, gender inequalities, academic hierarchy, intellectual productivity, Hungarian doctoral schools

The present paper reports on preliminary and partial results of the Hungarian part of an international cooperative research venture on the development of the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH) since 1945. The project has received funding for four years (ending in March 2017) from the European Commission in Brussels. It is piloted from Paris (EHESS) by professor Gisèle Sapiro with partners in Argentina, Austria, France, Great Britain, Italy and the Netherlands as well as associate partners in Brasil, Sweden and the United States. The main foci of our research concern long term processes of institutionalization and desinstitutionalization of a selection of core disciplines (demography, economics, national literary studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, social and cultural anthropology, sociology), movements observable in these branches of study to internationalization (in terms notably of transnational cooperation), the mechanisms of reception and transfer of major scholarly paradigms in various countries and disciplines (including the circulation of works of canonized authors). The final results of our investigations are expected to deliver clues for the furtherance of intellectual cooperation in the SSH and identify hindrances to the development of a ‘European research space’ proper.

Our study in Hungary is integral part of this project with some special features due to the availability here of a number of unexpected and hitherto utterly unexplored sources, which could not be tapped or mobilized by other research partners. I was also happy to secure the collaboration of professor Peter Tibor Nagy, with whom I have organized in close partnership the Hungarian research operations of the project.

Our sources have permitted the extension of the assignments of our original contract so as to cover the whole range of SSH disciplines (altogether some 15, according to different coding or categorizations) including a number of those not directly concerned by the international project. Moreover we could construct a set of rather unique prosopographical data banks, combining personal information on over 14 000 individuals liable to be connected via objective criteria to scholarly activities in the SSH together with their intellectual products an other information related to the translations of SSH studies into and from Hungaria, foreign SSH publications received in Hungarian libraries, etc. The main prosopographical basis of our work thus comprises a large (quasi-exhaustive) list of SSH practitioners in the country from the end of World War II up to the present. In concrete terms it includes references to all those concerned as members or degree holders of the Hungarian Academy of Science (HAS) – ‘candidates’, ‘academic doctors’, elected members of the HAS (a numerically closed body of distinguished scholars) - the teaching staff of higher education, other scholarly personnel in specialized research institutions as well as a number of others having published in the SSH since the 1950s.

This basic prosopography of some 14 000 contains individual data related to the life cycle and intellectual trajectory of the persons listed, though such data are not quite equally distributed, due to the scarcity or incomplete nature of some of the sources. Most of the time they include reference to vital dates and facts, social, regional ties and/or background, education, disciplinary choices, professional career (positions, places, institutions), intellectual productivity (books, journal studies, etc.), membership in professional associations, partnerships, international contacts and public distinctions obtained. Such raw information could then be developed into a number of meaningful variables marking main events of the scholarly career and productivity. (Ferrarotti, 1990.)

Our data sources appear to be extremely diversified. We could combine information gained from a number of published and archival sources, using sometimes our earlier established prosopographical data banks of students having enrolled in Hungarian universities before 1950. Our main sources were as follows :

HAS data on ‘candidates’ (till 2003), ‘academic doctors’ and members in the Yearbook of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Budapest, Akadémiai, yearly)

University staff as in the World of Learning and other published sources (yearly edition)

Various (alas mostly incomplete) lists of PhD (since 1993) in SSH departments of Hungarian universities

List of staff members of doctoral schools officially accredited to train PhD candidates in the SSH (2000-2010) =from the respective university yearbooks)

Who is Who-s (since 1990), national encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries as compiled by Peter Tibor Nagy (notably from New Great Hungarian Encyclopedia – 2004)

Bibliography of the Budapest Municipal Library of publications in the SSH since the 1960s (with some 45 000 books and over 800 000 studies listed

prosopographies of higher education students available from earlier surveys (for 1920-1950) (notably as the outcome of the research project ELITES08 funded by the European Research Council under my direction)

different survey data on students in various universities having training tracks in the SSH for various periods (notably for 1995-2010)

(probably incomplete) lists of laureates of official or professional prizes, medals, titles and other distinctions

special bibliographies of non Hungarian authors or authors of Hungarian background gained from foreign encyclopedias, cited in professional journals or translated into Hungarian.

This is not the right place to discuss all the numerous technical and methodological problems and difficulties encountered in the construction and exploitation of such a weighty data bank. Among the latter let me just mention the high incidence of errors connected to the manipulation of large scale listings (homonymy, misspellings, false attributions, etc.), questions raised by contradictory personal evidence, the unequal frequency of reliable information for different clusters of the survey (vital data available mostly in biographical sources only, like Who is Who-s or encyclopedia). Regretfully, some of the most promising source materials – like the archives on the staff linked to the HAS – have proved to be inaccessible to research. If this ban is lifted some time later, there still remains for future students of the SSH as well as other disciplines a big additional work to be added to ours so as to modify, complete or correct our conclusions.

Given the limits of such an exposé, I am focusing hereafter to one sector of SSH scholars listed in our data banks, the staff of the doctoral schools with special reference to educational science compared to other SSH disciplines.

Doctoral schools emerged – logically – after 1993 only, when training for PhD started in Hungarian universities. This was a major issue in the process of modernization of universities, since earlier in pre-socialist old regime universities the doctorate was either a mandatory formality (in Law and Medical schools) at the end of the normal study cycle or a degree linked to special exams (in the Faculties of Arts) and demanding the draft of a small piece of written texts without serious research effort. Since 1950 only the the HAS was entitled – following the Soviet model – to award scholarly ‘academic’ degrees (‘candidacy’, ‘academic doctorate’) with three types of innovation. First the titles were granted by a national committee of specialists in each discipline appointed by the presidency of the HAS. Second, they were based on formally prescribed new research results after several years of preparation of a number of pre-selected ‘aspirants’. Third, a good part of ‘aspirants’ were active in research institutions of the HAS or other state administrations (like the Ministry of Education) and not only (in some disciplines mostly not) in universities. It was a significant novelty of the educational reform after the end of communism to introduce the PhD training and degree on Western patterns linked to centrally organized accreditation of special ‘doctoral schools’, the staff of which will be the target of the present study. Our focus concern thus the main contemporary actors of the education of scholars in the SSH with several collective traits opposite to those of the earlier academic establishment.

Now educational science or pedagogy – as this branch of study was officially designated for a long time – shows a number of particular features, compared to other SSH disciplines. It was conceived of as an applied science of sorts, destined to complete the competences necessary for primary and secondary school teachers. Hence it can be regarded as the first SSH discipline to be integrated – back in the late 19th century - in the curricula of the Arts Faculties of universities in the country. For the same reason it avoided any ideological stigmatization as a ‘bourgeois science’ after the fall of the old regime, under Stalinist rule in the 1950s, unlike most other SSH. Though the discipline endured quite a similar ideological streamlining and surveillance as all other subjects taught in higher education at that time through the imposition of the almost exclusive reference to self-designed Soviet doctrinaire authorities, due to its pragmatic usage in teacher training it could survive without much intellectual injuries the worst period of communist repression.

In a few snapshot-like tables some major collective characteristics of educational scientist of contemporary doctoral schools of Hungarian universities will reveal themselves in contrast with all other SSH disciplines. First let us have a glimpse of basic quantitative data on the absolute and relative size of the academic populations concerned.

1. Staff of doctoral schools in the SSH by specializations around 2010

Discipline	Nb. of Staff	%	Rank order
Law and State sciences	271	8,5	5
Economics, management, organization science	537	16,9	1
Artistic disciplines	267	8,4	6
Regional, environmental studies	32	1,0
Philosophy	127	4,0	9
Geography, earth sciences	118	3,7	10
Linguistics, philology	323	10,1	3
Military sciences	146	4,6	8
Religious studies	98	3,0
Literary studies	389	12,2	2
Political science, international relations	75	2,3
Educational science	164	5,2	7
Psychology	96	3,0
Sociology	88	2,8
History	312	9,6	4
Folklore and history	44	1,4
Other human sciences, communication	96	3,1
Altogether	3183	100,0

In terms of numbers of those engaged in offering specialized training in the SSH, educational science occupies a medium position with one out of twenty of all the personnel of doctoral schools. The largest of all such clusters is that of economists followed by those of national literary studies, philologists and historians. The latter old, classical disciplines – in the sense of having been introduced with specialized chairs in universities since the early 20th century or before - still dominate this sector of the academic market with almost one half of positions. The new social sciences like sociology, political science or psychology take less than one tenth of all positions here. A negative bias is thus still perceptible in these figures to the detriment of the new social sciences which emerged slowly after the 1960s from the state of persecuted and stigmatized disciplines to the benefit of the classical branches of the SSH. The latter could obviously profit from the additional advantage of being applied subjects in economic or educational markets, notably in the training of specialized schoolteachers – the main sub-market of the Faculties of Arts. Pedagogy also shared this applied function but, visibly, in an auxiliary status, offering merely methodological tools for schoolteachers without representing a teaching subject proper in a school curriculum..

2. Disciplinary identity of those having published studies on social science issues (1950-2014)

Disciplines	Nb.	%	Rank order
Law and state sciences	1,165	7,9	5
Philosophy	653	4,5	7
Geography	393	2,7
Earth sciences	70	0,5
Interdisciplinary studies	78	0,5
Literary studies	1,743	11,9	3
Economics, management, organization sc.	2,683	18,3	1
Communication, transportation	7	0,01
Art history	550	3,8	8
Ethnology, folklore	317	2,2
Educational science	1,034	7,1	6
Linguistics, philology	1,265	8,6	4
Political science	212	1,4
Psychology	457	3,1
Sociology	511	3,5	9
History	1,950	13,3	2
Religious studies, theology	433	3,0
Musical studies	238	1,6
Military sciences	493	3,4	10
Physics	10	0,01
Biology	23	0,01
Chemistry	10	0,01
Mathematics	61	0,4
Agriculture	79	0,5
Polytechnics	148	1,0
Medicine	72	0,5
Total	14,655	100,0

Table 2 offers a comparison of the composition by disciplines of all those having been active in the SSH by publications over the last decades, including the staff of recently founded doctoral schools together with a number of other categories of scholars. They actually include several of those – up to less than 3 % only - not identifying themselves as social scientists proper, while having published studies dealing with issues liable to be qualified as pertaining to the SSH.

According to this set of indicators of scholarly productivity the relative position of educational science is somewhat better – with 7 % of all those cited – than among the staff of doctoral schools. The difference can be interpreted by the past glories of educational science, which did not suffer, unlike many other SSH disciplines, of Stalinist and post-Stalinist ostracism. Thus educational scientists could publish throughout the whole period, while sociologists, political scientists and many others were severely restricted (till the 1970s) or indeed banned (in the 1950s).

The rank order of the other disciplines in table 2 follows closely that observable in table 1., though with significantly different proportions. The first in the rank order are here the first ones with a vengeance, that is, with a higher share among those having published than among staff members of doctoral schools. This applies to economics, history and literary studies, with the exception of philology. If we compare the two lists of SSH disciplines in table 1. and 2. , one can identify ‘research intensive’ branches of studies, that is those the staff of which show a relatively higher share among ‘productive’ scholars, as opposed to others - even if the categories cited in the two tables are not exactly the same. Besides the most sizable disciplines mentioned above, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and ethnologists are significantly over-represented among ‘productive’ scholars, while actors of the other disciplines are more or less under-represented. This result should be analyzed – if space permitted – also by taking into account their institutional history, notably whether they could or could not continue in the 1950s and the 1960s to pursue normal publication activities or not. In other terms, whether the distribution of disciplines in contemporary doctoral schools was the same as the distribution of scholars of various topical fields earlier during the second half of the 20th century.

It is worth confronting these results with the figures of table 3. Indeed, in spite of appearances referred to beforehand (that educational scientists were relatively more numerous among ‘publishers’ over the whole period under scrutiny than among the staff of contemporary doctoral schools), the pedagogical discipline cannot be regarded as one of large scale and well recognized scholarly productivity and innovation. It appears on the contrary that the quantitative indicators of publishing activities of this branch of studies may be strong, but in the same time rather week in terms of quality. Thus, it is known, on the one hand, from the available lists of PhD graduates that since the institutionalization of the degree, some 12 % of graduates in the SSH have taken their grade in pedagogy. But, on the other hand, when studying the list of research projects funded by the Hungarian state agency to support scientific research OTKA (established as early as 1986) one finds only 3 % in pedagogy. This result is sharply confirmed in data of table 3. showing that there are no educational scientists at all among members of the canonized scholarly elite in the SSH, since none has an entry in any of the encyclopedia or bibliographical dictionaries exploited for the construction of our prosopographical lists. This is the only discipline in this case. Citation in encyclopedic sources can be regarded as a good approach of intellectual reputation, which on its turn is always connected more or less closely with scholarly achievements in publications. Pedagogy is thus not precisely a research oriented discipline. Certainly less than some social sciences – like political science or ethnology – the main market of which is exclusively in the field of scholarly (or journalistic) investigations objectified in numerous publications. This may be one of the reasons why political scientists and ethnologists present (together with experts in Law) the highest proportion of practitioners cited in encyclopedias.

3. Some collective markers of the staff of doctoral schools in the social sciences and the humanities (2000-2010)

Disciplines	PhD	Acade Mic ‘Candi date’	academic doctor or member	All	% in na- tional en cyclope dia	Rank or der
Law, State Science	58,9	22,0	18,4	100,0	8,0	3
Philosophy	47,8	35,0	17,4	100,0	3,2	8
Geography	37,0	33,0	29,6	100,0	1,9
Literary studies	61,2	20,1	18,8	100,0	4,7	5
Economy, managem.	48,5	37,6	13,8	100,0	2,2	10
Art history	87,6	7,6	4,9	100,0	1,3
Ethnology, folklore	58,7	10,9	30,5	100,0	10,9	2
Educational science	65,5	28,7	5,7	100,0	-
Linguistics	61,6	21,1	17,3	100,0	3,8	6
Political science	43,2	29,5	27,3	100,0	6,8	4
Psychology	66,7	20,0	13,3	100,0	1,3
Sociology	37,1	31,8	31,1	100,0	3,3	7
History	51,6	25,9	22,5	100,0	2,8	9
Religious studies	96,3	1,2	2,4	100,0	1,2
Musical studies	71,4	11,4	17,3	100,0	11,4	1
All	58,0	25,0	17,0	100,0	3,4
Nb.	1853	798	543	3194

But Table 3 offers other interesting references to the composition of doctoral schools by scholarly degrees held by their staff. If we disregard the very smallest branches of study in terms of size - like music, religion or art history – educational science appears to be (together with psychology) the discipline in which some two thirds of the staff of doctoral schools held a PhD only. This may also mean that this was a rather young staff on average, because elderly staff members, especially when they had begun their careers in the socialist regime, were expected to hold an academic degree (at least like ‘candidate’). The insignificant proportion (less than 6 % as against an average of 17 %) of ‘academic doctors’ or members of the HAS, the third lowest figure after religious studies and art historians, must be considered as another indicator of the relatively modest academic standing of the pedagogical profession. It is remarkable though, that the ‘research productive’ SSH disciplines - sociology, ethnology, geography, political science - staffed their doctoral schools up to near one third with teachers endowed with the highest academic qualifications.

For a more substantial interpretation of such figures, further characteristics of the doctoral staff – like age, residential distribution or gender – should also be drawn into the picture, as it will be tempted in the following tables.

4. Share (%) of women among practitioners of SSH disciplines

staff of doctoral schools (2010)	Rank order	Acade mic ‘candi- dates’ 2003	Rank order	Doctors of the Acade my 2003	Rank order
Law, State Science	19,2	11,2	7,6
Philosophy	18,5	20,1	14,8	5
Geography	19,6	17,3	5,1
Literary studies	36,5	5	28,4	7	12,5
Economics, management	23,5	21,6	12,8
Art history	24,4	36,4	3	32,6	1
Ethnology, folklore	43,5	3	36,9	2	19,2
Educational science	50,3	2	34,8	4	6,1
Linguistics, philology	41,6	4	30,2	6	13,4	6
Political science	13,6	20,2	18,2
Psychology	50,7	1	39,2	1	21,2	2
Sociology	36,4	6	30,6	5	20,8	3
History	20,9	20,5	12,9
Religious studies	9,8	16,7	-
Musical studies	22,9	20,9	16,7	4
All	29,2	24,2	13,3
Nb.	4729	1175

Table 4. brings us closer to the fundamental given – the fragmentation - of the global population of SSH practitioners via data on the – indeed vastly variable – degrees of feminization of the different professional and positional clusters.

In this respect in all the three categories distinguished the situation of educational scientist displays a marked deviation from the average.

Among contemporary and still active practitioners in doctoral schools half of educational scholars are women. This track, together with psychologists, is by far the most feminized, followed at distance by ethnologists, philologists, sociologists and students of national literature. These figures could be confirmed by other indicators of the advanced over-feminization of some of the latter professional tracks. From lists of PhD graduates since 1993 one can realize that the recruitment of this pool of contemporary scholars in educational science consists of women up to 71 %. It is well known that the feminization of the pedagogical professions of all – especially of the lower – levels goes back to a rather long historical past. It had started already in the last period of the old (pre-socialist) regime, since the clientele of the Faculties of Arts, exclusive providers of graduates for the teaching profession in secondary schools, tended to be composed by half of women…

All the other disciplines are relatively under-feminized in the staff of contemporary doctoral schools, religious studies and political science most conspicuously. The contrast between the two most recently developed disciplines – sociology and political science – is worth noting in this respect. The very low percentage of females in the latter may be accountable by the fact that women in general accede to political responsibilities also very rarely in this country. This is a socio-logical inter-connection. The share of women among scholars interested in politics and politicians seems to go together.

The picture is somewhat different for ‘candidates’ in 2003, having graduated with the lower academic degree only, but over the long period since the 1950s. There again, educational scientists are among those SSH scholars with the highest proportions of women, preceded though by psychologists and even art historians and ethnologist and followed by sociologists and literary students. All other disciplines are less feminized than the average, law and religious studies at the lowest level. Here too the above contrast between sociologists and political scientists appears sharply.

The patterns is quite different though for the distribution of women among ‘academic doctors’ and members of the HAS still active in 2003, constituting the top of the academic hierarchy.

Feminization is much less general here as compared with the lower ranks of the ladder, an indeed striking illustration of the continued efficiency of the ‘glass ceiling’ on the road of the promotion of women in intellectual and other upper social class professions. The share of women is almost half of what could be perceived among ‘academic candidates’.

But, on the other hand, with less than half of the average, the representation of women among educational scientists is particularly poor, the absolutely poorest together with geography and legal experts among all other SSH disciplines. The contrast between them and the others is all the more striking, because all the others tend to gather around the mean proportion, with the exception of art historians, followed at a distance by psychologists, sociologists and ethnographers. At this high level of academic prominence the above observed gap among the ‘new’ SSH - between degrees of feminization of sociologists and political scientists – has all but disappeared.

5. The share of women and their publications among the staff of doctoral schools in the SSH (2010)

1. Nb. of Staff of Doctoral Schools 2010	2. % of Women staff of doctoral schools (2010)	3. % of Studies in jour- nals by women of school staffs	4. Average size by pages of studies in jour nals by women of school staffs
Law, State Science	287	19,2	12,0	12,9
Philosophy	152	18,5	13,5	13,8
Geography	107	19,6	9,0	9,0
Literary studies	384	36,5	23,6	25,1
Economics, management	549	23,5	16,9	17,2
Art history	225	24,4	18,8	20,9
Ethnology, folklore	46	43,5	10,5	13,2
Educational science	173	50,3	55,8	39,3
Linguistics, philology	365	41,6	23,4	24,6
Political science	44	13,6	10,7	12,2
Psychology	150	50,7	36,7	35,9
Sociology	151	36,4	29,3	28,7
History	436	20,9	19,2	21,0
Religious studies	82	9,8	1,7	1,2
Musical studies	35	22,9	29,5	30,6
All	3194	29,2	19,5	20,5

Table 5 offers three types of information, exclusively on recently founded doctoral schools : it reiterates data on the share of women in various disciplines, it indicates the absolute number of the staffs concerned and supplies two sets of indicators on their scholarly productivity by gender.

Thus, clearly enough, one can identify small and big study branches (1st column of Table 5). Musical studies, political science and ethnology are, together with religious studies, the most modestly staffed disciplines with a teaching personnel of much less than 100. Economics and history are manifestly the biggest ones followed by the classical literary studies and philology. The other disciplines, notably the ‘new’ social sciences occupy middle range positions. These figures can be probably explained by the extension and localization of the demand for the training provided by schools under scrutiny. Economics has, obviously enough, a dual or trial market of would-be managers and scholars, including experts in political economy of public administration. History, literary studies and philology have markets limited to academia, but they are large enough, being the main subjects for the training of both secondary school teachers and free lance or privately employed intellectuals (translators, publishers, editors, interpreters, journalists) in charge of the Faculties of Arts. For an in-depth interpretation of these figures, the actual market situation of each discipline should be specifically investigated.

The real originality of Table 5 lies in the global indicators of intellectual performance it presents by gender. However ‘raw’ such quantitative data on publications prove to be, this is an as yet quite unique set of information, at least for Hungary. (Though I have no knowledge of anything comparable relative to other national intellectual fields.). Without attempting to explore all the - sometimes intriguing - details of these figures, let us content ourselves with some basic observations. They can be summarized as follows.

On the average (last line of columns 3 in Table 5), women are less productive then men in terms of the number of studies published in journals. This fact can be related to the lower mean academic status of women (as demonstrated above in Table 4) as both an outcome and a cause. But it can be interpreted also by the less demanding motivation of women to aim the highest intellectual achievements, given the manifest hindrances they may experience due to the ‘glass ceiling’ of the promotion regime of women.

Such ‘glass ceiling might be most visible in totally male dominated disciplines like religious studies or, to a lesser extent, political science. Religious studies constitute a borderline case of the intellectual prevalence of males, since 10 % of women in the profession produce only less than 2 % of publications in this branch of erudition. Comparable though still less markedly similar cases are offered by ethnology (more than 4 times more women in the staff than among authors) as well as geography (with more than twice more females among the staff than among authors). Quantitative discrepancies between the proportion of women in the doctoral staffs and authors are more moderate in most other disciplines. The balance is almost equal in some of them, like history, political science or art history. In two disciplines however the percentages of women among authors exceed that among the staff. Educational science and musical studies belong to this exceptional category.

Without entering into detailed investigations, one can only speculate for an interpretation of such exceptionality. One should be in a position to compare the discipline specific values invested in publications as well as expectations of style, content, referential apparatus, recourse to quantification, etc. prevalent in the given disciplines before once could propose an in-depth analysis of this finding. The singularity of educational science is moreover strengthened by data of column 4 of Table 5. Indeed educational science is also a discipline with the far longest studies produced, on average, by women specialists concerned. Unfortunately we have no comparison here with male practitioners. By themselves, inequalities of the mean study size seem to respond to a not quite dissimilar logic as the one governing the frequency of publications. Educational scientists and authors of musical studies produced the longest articles, on average, together with psychologists, literary historians and philologists.

One can get closer to the interpretation of data on productivity thanks to the rather complex data collection of Table 6 in form of a multivariate analysis mobilizing four ‘independent’ variables (discipline, gender, age and residence) as well as four ‘dependent’ ones (by hypothesis) to compare the productivity of educational scientists with the whole set of teaching members of the doctoral schools in the SSH. Here we had to content ourselves with this unique comparison, though a similar scheme could be constructed for all other SSH disciplines. This would have exceeded by large the space liable to be reserved for the present study. It must be also noted that we could not find all the necessary information for all the variables resorted to but up to some 68 % only of members of the doctoral schools in question. Such relative scarcity of information would have imposed a measure of caution in the interpretation of these fascinating results, if the proportions women in table 6. would not correspond almost exactly to those of table 4. Thus the sample appears to be perfectly representative.

6. Indicators of intellectual productivity of staff members of SSH doctoral schools by the gender and age (2000-2010)

1. Discip- Line	2. Gender	3. Place of professi- onal practice	4. Age: born before 1961 (‘old’) or after (‘young’)	5. Num ber of staff*	6. Nb of studies by staffmembers on ave rage	7. % of studies of 5 pages or +	8. % of studies in fo- reign lgs.	9. % of studies in fo- reign lgs. of thosewith 5 pages or +
ALL	Men	Budapest	‘old’	562	56,5	53,1	23,7	30,7
SOCIAL	Men	Budapest	‘young’	305	23,0	60,4	28,3	34,5
SCIEN-	Men	Province	‘old’	309	52,6	58,2	20,2	27,0
CES	Men	Province	‘young’	290	24,4	58,2	19,3	26,1
ALL	Women	Budapest	‘old’	183	37,3	56,0	26,7	32,1
SOCIAL	Women	Budapest	‘young’	153	16,5	58,2	29,1	38,0
SCIEN-	Women	Province	‘old’	122	30,7	59,6	28,5	34,4
CES	Women	Province	‘young’	142	14,8	68,2	32,4	35,6
ALL	Doctoral	STAFF	2147
% OF	WOMEN	27,9 %
EDUCA-	Men	Budapest	‘old’	26	49,6	35,1	10,7	17,2
TIONAL	Men	Budapest	‘young’	11	19,5	49,7	23,6	20,1
SCI-	Men	Province	‘old’	13	37,9	58,3	20,6	24,0
ENCE-	Men	Province	‘young’	7	28,2	51,1	7,2	10,1
EDUCA-	Women	Budapest	‘old’	21	64,5	18,2	16,7	64,5
TIONAL	Women	Budapest	‘young’	15	59,2	14,8	17,2	59,2
SCI-	Women	Province	‘old’	12	65,9	10,4	10,0	65,9
ENCE	Women	Province	‘young’	13	75,5	20,9	19,2	75,5
ALL	Doctoral	STAFF	118
% of	Women	51,7 %

Starting the analysis with column nb. 5, the Table displays a number of similarities but also discrepancies between the two disciplinary clusters in question.

As to the territorial distribution by gender, women scholars appear to be somewhat less unequally distributed as men. If we argue in terms of difficulties of women to reach the upper echelons of the academic hierarchy concentrated in the capital city, this result is a logical one, even if differences between the sexes are not very sizable. he composition by age, both territorial and gender differences are highly significant and confirm the above argument in terms of positions within the given hierarchies. The size of doctoral staffs in the provinces is relatively much younger than in Budapest. While age differences are important in the capital, they are much less so or indeed even reversed to the benefit of the upcoming younger generation of scholars in the provinces both for educational scientists and all the SSH. If we find more of the younger generations in the staff of provincial doctoral schools, the expectation that they are, as yet, of lower academic ranks seems to be in order.

Discrepancies in terms of publications follow a rather different and more complex logic as illustrated in column 6 of Table 6. Surely enough, globally, women appear as much less productive than men and, for the latter, productivity is always a function of age : senior scholars had more time to bring out a larger number of publications than the younger ones, at a less advanced stage of their career. But this logic is properly reversed in educational science doctoral schools. Here women are much more productive than men and the age difference is not only negligible (for Budapest) but turns to its contrary in the provinces where female educationalists show the absolutely highest degree of productivity with more than 75 publications cited in their bibliographies. Women, especially those in the province, may thus apply a strategy of compensation to catch up with their counterparts among men and those in the capital city in the discipline of pedagogy.

Column nb. 7 of Table 6 gives data on the proportion of larger studies (beyond 5 pages) published by staff members. Here differences as a rule stand at the expense of educational scientists, who, clearly enough have published less long studies on the average than doctoral school members in the SSH globally. This is a confirmation of our findings above concerning the ‘less scholarly’ orientation of educational scientists. Still, this general result applies above all to male educationists in Budapest (while their fellow male scholars of the province publish as abundantly as the rank and file scholars of other disciplines) and to women educationalists in general. Thus, as to women, their relatively high productivity in terms of the number of their publications, appears to be achieved at the expense of the smaller size of their studies cited in their bibliographies.

One can make a quite similar observation about the proportion of publications in foreign languages. If there is no systematic difference between staff members in the capital and in the provinces in this respect, or between men and women : indeed women in general tend to publish more here than men. But the contrast is quite sharp on two other scores.

The younger staff is generally equally or even somewhat more productive outside the mother tongue than their older colleagues (except male educationists in the provinces). This is an evidence for the enhanced pressure on (and better opportunities for) the younger clusters to find foreign contacts and acquire the linguistic competences involved in the post-1989 open society, than for their older fellow scholars, trained under the in this respect more constrained circumstances of socialism. But the gap here is not very large. None of the categories referred to on column 8 of Table 6 exceed one third of the publications concerned. On the average one quarter only of publication in general and less than one fifth in educational science are in foreign tongues.

With this, the second major difference between the categories cited on Table 6 has been announced. In educational science foreign publications are significantly rarer than by other SSH specialists. Moreover, male educationalists publish much less often long studies (more than 5 pages) than specialists of other disciplines as demonstrated in column 9 of Table 6. The strange thing is though that this does not apply at all to women educationalist, the majority of whose publication exceed by large 5 pages. This is an unexpected result indeed. It is in decisive opposition to all the other categories mobilized in the column, rarely exceeding one third of studies in a foreign tongue. One can of course say, that women educationalists compensate thus, in a way, the relative rarity of their publications in languages other than Hungarian. Only an in-depth investigation of publishing practices, their functions in the career and their technical achievement (by translation or via linguistic skills proper) can help to make sense of such discrepancies.

This can serve also as a general conclusion of our study. Our quantified data based on prosopographical listing of SSH personnel may not produce final research results via all their details. But they can supply above all important targets and means of reflection on recruitment, scholarly practices, career patterns, productivity and other given, which are typical of the development of their disciplines in a retrospective view. Comparisons between various branches of study, grounded in objective observations as presented above, appear to lead to particularly significant new findings and interpretations.

Bibliography

Brunnbauer, Ulf – Kraft, Claudia – Schulze Wessel, Martin (eds), Sociology and Ethnography in East-Central and South-East Europe : Scientific Self-Description in State Socialist Countries, München, Oldenburg Verlag, 2011.

Broady, Donald, French Prosopography and Suggested Readings, in
Poetics, Journal of European Research on Culture, Media and the Arts,
30, 2002, pp. 381-385.

Ferrarotti, F., Histoire et histoires de vie: la méthode biographique
dans les sciences sociales. Paris, 1990.

Kaase Max, Sparschuh, Vera (eds.), Three Social Science Disciplines in Central and Eastern Europe, Handbook on Economics, Political Science and Sociology (1989-2001), Bonn-Berlin, GESIS Social Science Information Centre, Collegium Budapest, 2002.

See the homepage of the project under INTERCO-SSH.

On problems of the usage of prosopographies see Broady 2002.

Data from the global prosopography of practitioners of the social sciences (1950-2015) defined by various criteria of published studies and positions occupied in academic fields, as presented in our introduction above.

From the list of projects funded by this state agency.

The lists of PhD graduates have been established from university yearbooks and from the archives of universities collecting data on degrees granted.