Habilitation

Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching, and further education, which usually includes a second dissertation.

The degree, sometimes abbreviated Dr. habil. (Doctor habilitatus), dr hab. (doktor habilitowany), or D.Sc. (Doctor of Sciences in Russia and some CIS countries), is often a qualification for full professorship in those countries.

In German-speaking countries it allows the degree holder to bear the title PD (for Privatdozent). In a number of countries there exists an academic post of docent, appointment to which often requires such a qualification. The degree conferral is usually accompanied by a public oral defence event (a lecture or a colloquium) with one or more opponents. The habilitation thesis is intended to demonstrate that the author has mastered their field in its entirety. For this reason, it is usually written on a topic that is very different from the subject of the doctoral dissertation. Unlike doctoral theses, which must be published by law in Germany, many habilitation theses remain unpublished.

Habilitation is usually awarded 5–15 years after a PhD degree or its equivalent. Achieving this academic degree does not automatically give the scientist a paid position, though many people who apply for the degree already have steady university employment.

The term habilitation is derived from the Medieval Latin habilitare, meaning "to make suitable, to fit", from Classical Latin habilis "fit, proper, skillful". The degree developed in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the seventeenth century (c. 1652). Initially, habilitation was synonymous with "doctoral qualification". 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". Afterwards, it became normal in the German university system to write two doctoral theses: the inaugural thesis (Inauguraldissertation), completing a course of study, and the habilitation thesis (Habilitationsschrift), which opens the road to a professorship.

Since the early 21st century, the habilitation is no longer mandatory for appointment to a professorship in Germany. Since then, there have been major differences between the various disciplines. While the habilitation remains common in most humanities and in medical research, it has become the exception in many natural sciences.

Habilitation qualifications exist or existed in:

A habilitation thesis can be either cumulative (based on previous research, be it articles or monographs) or monographical, i.e., a specific, unpublished thesis, which then tends to be very long. While cumulative habilitations are predominant in some fields (such as medicine), they have been, since about a century ago, almost unheard of in others (such as law).