Correlates of career advancement in Australian universities

Academics in Australian universities who were lecturers in 1978 and senior lectures by 1988, or senior lecturers in 1978 and readers/associate professors by 1988, are compared with academics who had remained at the same level of appointment over this period. Career advancement was associated not only with demographic variables, but with work habits, and level of performance in research-related academic roles. These measures were themselves intercorrelated. The variables that most distinguished the academics in the sample who had been promoted from those who had not included rate of publication in refereed journals, level of citation, research grants applied for and obtained, and the number of PhD students under a person's supervision. Likelihood of promotion was correlated negatively with self-reported commitment to teaching. This demonstration that career advancement is associated primarily with an academic's record of achievement in research is consistent with claims in the literature about the incentive and reward system operating within Australian universities.

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