Is there gender bias in awarding cum laude for the PhD thesis?

Peter van den Besselaar; Charlie Mom

doi:10.1007/s11192-024-04985-6

Is there gender bias in awarding cum laude for the PhD thesis?

Peter van den Besselaar^*
, Charlie Mom

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

In the Dutch academic system, PhD theses can be awarded with cum laude and at most 5% of all PhD graduates receive this selective distinction for their thesis. In this paper, we investigate whether there is gender bias in awarding cum laude, using data from one of the major Dutch research universities. We measure the quality of the PhD theses using bibliometric data. A main result is that the set of PhD theses receiving cum laude on average do not have a higher quality than the best theses not getting cum laude. A second main result is that, after controlling for the quality of the PhD theses, women still have a substantially lower probability to receive cum laude. These results strongly suggest that the distribution of awards suffers from gender bias, and the study creates a strong doubt about the adequacy of the procedures leading to cum laude for the PhD thesis.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	6349-6371
Number of pages	23
Journal	Scientometrics
Volume	129
Issue number	10
Early online date	17 Apr 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04985-6
Publication status	Published - Oct 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Funding

Part of the work has been supported by the European Commission, Grant 824574, the GRANteD Project. The authors acknowledge Tijs van den Broek (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for comments on an earlier version, and Harry Ganzeboom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Luis Sanz-Ménendez (CSIC, Spanish National Research Council) for methodological advice. The studied university provided the data about the PhD graduates. The report underlying this article was presented to the rector and the deans of the university in July 2021. An earlier version was presented at the ISSI conference in Bloomington, Indiana in July 2023 (Van den Besselaar & Mom, 2023). This version is substantially extended.

Funders	Funder number
European Commission
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme	824574

Keywords

Awards
Bias
Cum laude
Gender
PhD thesis
Recognition

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10.1007/s11192-024-04985-6

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Cite this

@article{adc79ff338554dc49cdb18847da41734,

title = "Is there gender bias in awarding cum laude for the PhD thesis?",

abstract = "In the Dutch academic system, PhD theses can be awarded with cum laude and at most 5\% of all PhD graduates receive this selective distinction for their thesis. In this paper, we investigate whether there is gender bias in awarding cum laude, using data from one of the major Dutch research universities. We measure the quality of the PhD theses using bibliometric data. A main result is that the set of PhD theses receiving cum laude on average do not have a higher quality than the best theses not getting cum laude. A second main result is that, after controlling for the quality of the PhD theses, women still have a substantially lower probability to receive cum laude. These results strongly suggest that the distribution of awards suffers from gender bias, and the study creates a strong doubt about the adequacy of the procedures leading to cum laude for the PhD thesis.",

keywords = "Awards, Bias, Cum laude, Gender, PhD thesis, Recognition",

author = "\{van den Besselaar\}, Peter and Charlie Mom",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2024.",

year = "2024",

month = oct,

doi = "10.1007/s11192-024-04985-6",

language = "English",

volume = "129",

pages = "6349--6371",

journal = "Scientometrics",

issn = "0138-9130",