Barriers to Career Progression in the Higher Education Sector: Perceptions of Australian Academics

Tehmina Khan and Pavithra Siriwardhane
Additional contact information
Tehmina Khan: School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, College of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne 3000, Australia
Pavithra Siriwardhane: School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, College of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne 3000, Australia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: There are multiple factors that can potentially impact the career progression of academics to professoriate level (referred to as levels D and E in Australia). This research provides a detailed understanding of critical factors (by gender) that negatively influence career progressions. Perceptions of factors that influence career progressions have been found to be more pronounced amongst female academics in STEMM and business disciplines. The conventional view of family commitments as being a hindrance to career progression has not been supported in our data. On the contrary, it is the organizational factors that would appear to be prevalent at an institutional level that seems to be significant barriers to the career progression. Particularly for female academics’ progression to levels D and E. The most prominent factors identified through confirmatory factor analysis conducted in the study are workloads and a lack of resources to undertake research and to generate research performance, which is a critical impacting factor for career progression to professoriate levels. These factors have been exacerbated by COVID-19.

Keywords: academic career progression; higher education sector; STEMM; business; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6255/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6255/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:11:p:6255-:d:567222

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().