Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries.
The term became synonymous with "post-doctoral qualification" in Germany in the 19th century "when holding a doctorate seemed no longer sufficient to guarantee a proficient transfer of knowledge to the next generation".
The level of scholarship of a habilitation is considerably higher than for a doctoral dissertation in the same academic tradition in terms of quality and quantity, and must be accomplished independently, without direction or guidance of a faculty supervisor.
Although disciplines and countries vary in the typical number of years for obtaining habilitation after getting a doctorate, it usually takes longer than for the American academic tenure.
Theoretically, if an assistant professor does not succeed in obtaining habilitation in this time, they should be moved to a position of a lecturer, with a much higher teaching load and no research obligations, or even be dismissed.
In practice, however, on many occasions schools extend the deadlines for habilitation for most scholars if they do not make it in time, and there is evidence that they are able to finish it in the near future.
[9][10][11] Livre-docência is a title (similar to Habilitation in Germany) granted to holders of doctorate degrees upon submission of a cumulative thesis followed by a viva voce examination.
The award of the French habilitation is a general requirement for being the main supervisor of PhD students and to be eligible for full professor positions.
Members of Directeur de Recherche corps who are assimilated to full professors by the CNU do not require the French habilitation to supervise PhD students.
[13][14] Depending on the field, the French habilitation requires consistent research from five to ten years after appointment as an associate professor (maître de conférences), a substantial amount of significant publications, the supervision of at least one PhD student from start to graduation, and/or a successful track record securing extramural funding as a principal investigator, as well as a sound, ambitious, and feasible five-year research project.
In order to hold the rank of a full professor (W3) within the German university system, it is necessary to have obtained the habilitation (or "habilitation-equivalent achievements").
Someone in possession of the Venia legendi but not a professorship has the right to carry the title Privatdozent (for men) or Privatdozentin (for women), abbreviated PD or Priv.-Doz..
Regarding university habilitations, the so-called Gelmini reform of the research and university teaching system (Italian Law 240 of year 2010 and subsequent modifications) has established the national scientific habilitation for the calls in the role of associate professor and full professor (called abilitazione scientifica nazionale, or ASN).
This means that, as a prerequisite for being able to be selected by a university committee to fill these roles, it is necessary to have obtained the scientific qualification for the relative kind of teaching.
In the field of free regulated professions, protected by a professional body (architects, lawyers, engineers, doctors, pharmacists, journalists, etc.
Finally, some habilitations, since their activities cannot be done autonomously, need to be hired in a suitable structure in order to effectively carry out the profession in question.
This is for example the case of the education sector: once the qualifying examination has been passed, a public competition must be won for recruitment in an upper or lower secondary school.
(Doctor of Divinity) found in the UK, Ireland, and some Commonwealth countries, which are awarded on the basis of a career of published work.
(Poland) by institutions such as the European Commission Directorate-General for Research,[18] and therefore usually implies the holder of such title has a degree equivalent to habilitation.
Many feel overly dependent on their supervising principal investigators (the professor heading the research group) since superiors have power to delay the process of completing the habilitation.
A further problem comes with funding support for those who wish to pursue a habilitation, where older candidates often feel discriminated against, for example under the DFG's Emmy-Noether programme.
On the other hand, amongst many senior researchers, especially in medicine, the humanities and the social sciences, the habilitation was—and still is—regarded as a valuable instrument of quality control before giving somebody a tenured position for life.
Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia, three states with conservative governments, filed suit at the German Constitutional Court against the new law replacing the habilitation with the junior professor.
