In Latin, the term habilitare means “to make suitable.” In the academic usage it came to denote the permission for a scholar to deliver lectures. In continental Europe, a “Habilitation” is a degree that follows a PhD, which people who want to work as researchers and lecturers at a university or research institute must obtain. As in other places in Europe, Central and Eastern European universities favor internal candidates, and the government ultimately controls the conferment of the highest academic degrees and professorships. In Poland specifically, the habilitacja (Habilitation) opens the path to professorship, allowing a scholar to become a full-fledged academic (samodzielny pracownik naukowy, or “unsupervised scientific worker”) and to lecture at universities. However, administrative and political pitfalls make it difficult to obtain a habilitacja. Typically, once a “dr hab,” a researcher may get permanent employment at a university, away from fixed-term contracts. In the UK, the Habilitation degree does not exist. However, within the European common scientific area, scholars from the UK, as well as from Ireland and Malta—where universities follow the British system—must be accommodated in agreement with the Common Market principles.
The history of the Habilitation degree in Europe
The history of the Habilitation degree is connected to philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt’s tertiary education reform in the Kingdom of Prussia. This reform was implemented after the country’s crushing defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s armies in 1807. To survive as a state, Prussia had to modernize its institutions quickly. Part and parcel of this effort was the development of the now so-called “Humboldtian model” for research university, as embodied by the University of Berlin, which Humboldt helped create in 1809-1810. What was new in this type of university is that it linked research with the state’s immediate developmental, economic, and military needs. The government financed such institutions and allocated funds (“grants”) to specified research priorities. In return for the largesse, the state’s authorities extended control over researchers (including in the form of censorship), making them into pliant civil servants. Thus, in the early nineteenth century in Prussia, researchers had academic freedom but were nonetheless strictly bound by the financial, legal, and censorship limits imposed by the state. The Habilitation was an essential element of this control, because this hard-to-obtain degree allowed the government to decide who would be allowed to lecture and receive tenure (permanent employment) at a university.
Following the reestablishment of a modicum of the ancien régime at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia and the other great powers at the time were insistent on curbing free thinkers perceived as being guilty of spreading liberal and nationalist ideals that were seen as anti-monarchical. During the following year, in 1816, the University of Berlin adopted its Statuten (charter), which introduced the Habilitation degree. Subsequently, as university research and employment were being professionalized, the Habilitation degree was adopted throughout continental Europe and became a fixture of the praised Humboldtian model of modern university. Today in Germany, according to the established tradition and legal regulations, an assistant professor obtaining a Habilitation becomes a Privatdozent. The title comes with permission to teach (venia legendi) but does not secure employment. Yet, the holder of this title must teach—even in an unpaid capacity—to maintain the qualification. In addition, the Privatdozent is expected to seek a university Stuhl, or “chair”—in other words, a professorship. In case of failure in this effort, the Privatdozent must leave academia, usually at the age of 50, or teach for (nearly) free at a university and work elsewhere in addition to cover living expenses.
The Habilitation degree in Poland
Polish professorships come in a variety of guises. First, the title of “university-level professor” (profesor uniwersytecki) is conferred to a researcher by the university where he or she works. However, the title of “professor” can only be conferred by the Polish president, which makes it a highly politicized nomination. The position is further divided, as there is a lower rank professorship—professor nadzwyczajny (professor extraordinarius in Latin, or “Reader” in the Oxbridge system)—and a higher rank professorship—professor zwyczajny (professor ordinarius in Latin), that is, full professor.
In Poland, the main difficulty faced by a candidate starting the habilitacja procedure is finding a faculty with the right to confer this degree in his or her preferred discipline and that would agree to engage in the procedure on behalf of that researcher. The process rests as much on scholarship as it does on academic politics and personal likes and dislikes. The narrow group of scholars holding a habilitacja in Poland, for all practical reasons, functions as a corporation not interested in broadening its membership too widely. However, the law prescribes that universities and other tertiary-education institutions must employ a certain number of scholars holding a Habilitation degree to confer bachelor’s degrees (BA, or licencjat), master’s degrees (MA, or magisterium), PhDs (doktorat), or habilitacja. This legal requirement puts Habilitation holders in high demand. This was especially true from the 1990s to the 2010s, when Poland’s tertiary-education sector ballooned to include almost 400 (mostly private) institutions. At the time, researchers with the “dr hab” title could even dictate their salaries. Their empowered situation contrasted with the typical indignities suffered by PhD holders, who struggled to find suitable academic employment and often earned less than workers in the service industry.
As far as the steps a scholar must follow to obtain a Habilitation degree in Poland, once a faculty accepts a candidate’s application for the habilitacja procedure, the process unfolds in a highly structured although painstakingly slow manner. First, candidates who wish to apply through an institution other than their home university must pay a fee. In 2020, this fee amounted to PLN25,000—or £5,000—which is equivalent to a PhD holder’s annual salary. This financial barrier means that the vast majority of PhD holders are compelled to carry out the habilitacja procedure at their home universities. This restriction allows the university to pay itself for the expenses involved and frees the candidate from footing the bill. But in turn, the candidate is obliged to remain and teach at that university indefinitely. The custom reduces the mobility of university researchers, which is already limited for other reasons. Next, reviewers are appointed—two by the faculty and two by the Polish Ministry of Higher Education. These four reviewers must read and assess the candidate’s monograph (formally known as the rozprawa habilitacyjna, or “habilitation dissertation”), alongside post-PhD scholarly output. The monograph constitutes an indispensable basis for the procedure. Within three months, the reviewers must write rather lengthy reviews; in reality, this stage often lasts more than six months. If at least three reviews are positive, the faculty votes on whether to continue with the procedure. If so, a date is set for an obrona habilitacji (Habilitation defense), after which the faculty decides whether to confer the degree.
After a successful defense, it is customary for the candidate to invite at least the dean and the reviewers to dinner, and preferably the entire Faculty Council. The official conferment of the degree (the equivalent of graduation) takes place once or twice a year when the university rektor delivers all advanced diplomas. Pertinent documents are then sent to the Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (Ministry of Science and Tertiary Education), where an independent body—the Central Committee on Scientific Degrees and Titles (Centralna Komisja do Spraw Stopni i Tytułów)—verifies the procedure, reaffirms the conferment, and registers the degree in the centralized database of Nauka Polska (“Polish Science”). Only in rare cases, is the conferment announced null and void—for various reasons. At present, in the context of the observed decline in research output and its quality in Poland, the phasing out of the Habilitation is a hotly discussed topic.
I personally completed the Habilitation procedure in the early 2010s in Poland, while positioned at a university in the UK. When I left Poland in 2007—shortly before the publication of my monograph, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Palgrave 2009)—I had already begun applying to various universities there in pursuit of the Habilitation degree. However, part of my motivation to leave was to escape the indignities, financial burden, and employment limitations imposed on scholars in Poland, which the institution of Habilitation perpetrates. Once in the UK, I was informed in 2011 of the date of my Habilitation defense with only one week’s notice. It was a tall order, but I managed to book flights and a hotel room and arrive in Warsaw in time for my defense.
Tomasz Kamusella is a reader in modern history at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. He specializes in the interdisciplinary study of language politics and nationalism in modern Central Europe. Kamusella’s recent monographs include Politics and the Slavic Languages (2021) and Eurasian Empires as Blueprints for Ethiopia (2021). His latest work, Words in Space and Time: A Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe (2021), is also available online as an open access publication.
Published on August 15, 2024.
