New publication: Integration or stratification? Cumulative advantage and prestige homophily in the CEEPUS inter-university network

SΛTIS member Tomáš Lintner has published a new study called Integration or stratification? Cumulative advantage and prestige homophily in the CEEPUS inter-university network.

Drawing on a twenty-year longitudinal network design, the study distinguishes between two related but distinct dimensions of institutional participation in international mobility programs: structural integration — encompassing both the formation and dissolution of thematic collaboration networks — and stratification, defined as the accumulation of prestige and advantage that shapes which institutions come to dominate the network and with whom they align.

Using a bipartite stochastic actor-oriented model applied to openly accessible administrative records from CEEPUS, the authors examined reciprocal links between institutional network membership, geopolitical position, research prestige, and institutional type across the period 2005/2006–2024/2025. Institutions already embedded in multiple thematic networks were substantially more likely to expand their memberships further, while higher-prestige institutions were both more active and more likely to cluster with similarly positioned partners. European Union membership predicted lower average expansion, while public and private institutions displayed both differential activity levels and strong within-type clustering.

The findings suggest that the consequences of network embeddedness depend not only on the presence of collaboration but on the prestige structures in which that collaboration is embedded — a distinction that carries particular weight for institutions occupying peripheral positions within the academic hierarchy. Issues of structural integration — precisely because they shape the conditions under which collaboration emerges and persists — emerge as meaningful predictors of network evolution. The results contribute to ongoing debates on international academic mobility and raise questions about the structural and relational conditions that leave certain institutions persistently at the margins of the system.

Read the full article here.