Career advancement comparative perspective study of university lecturer

Globalization and international standard universities trend drive the higher education system to become more dynamic and innovative. The lecturer is a profession that drives and encourages university competitiveness. Therefore, better career advancement and development are vital in encouraging higher education competitiveness. The United States of America (USA) is currently a world-class university orientation, followed by Australia. Hence, other countries, especially developing countries, should know the USA and Australia higher education system, especially in the lecturers’ career advancement and development. This study is necessary to answer research questions about comparing academic career advancement systems in the USA and Australia. This study will give other countries new insight into academic career advancement. The researchers apply the findings from a systematic review. This study focuses on six aspects discussed: regulations, educational qualifications, lecturer obligation status in the higher education, career ladder, career advancement stages, and the lecturers' duties also responsibilities in lecturer career advancement in the USA and Australia. This study examines the gap between lecturers' career advancement systems in the USA and Australia comprehensively. The researchers observe by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia. Also, the researchers compare the results using comparative public administration theory. study showed a comparison between the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia. The comparisons can be seen from the six aspects of the analysis reviewed and compared: regulations, educational qualifications, lecturer engagement status in higher education, career ladder, career advancement stages, and duties as well as responsibilities in the lecturer career advancement in the USA and Australia. The systematic review study can capture and analyze the gap between the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia. Based on this study findings, the gap between the USA and Australia is not that far away. The strengths and weaknesses in each country show that there is a slightly similar system in a developed country to another developed country. This comparison is an implementation of comparative public administration. The academic career advancement in the USA and Australia shows that they take serious concern about the human capital concept, especially on talent management. This study will give new insight to developing to combine their system with the strengths of the developed country and will produce new academic career policies. Hopefully, their new policies about academic career advancement will drive their higher compete globally.


Introduction
An academic career is one of the human resource management in higher education. The higher education institutions should facilitate the lecturers' academic career advancement in their institutions. Indeed, the obligation should follow the applicable regulations of the higher education system. Academic career advancement is one of the methods which plays a vital role in the development and improvement of higher education quality. In this globalization era, the global trend of higher education in the USA has influenced higher education in other nations. The USA is ranked first as a country with the strongest higher education system in the world (QS Top Universities, 2018).
Conceptually, several studies discussed academic career advancement in the previous. Theoretically, the lecturer career advancement has unique compared to the other professions, that the studies which discuss academic career theory are still rare. Several studies present career theory generally on the academic career issues (Gläser & Laudel, 2015). Generally, the USA and Australia have similarities related to the primary job, which are teaching and research. The academic positions are different in each country, yet there is similarity on the career ladder. The career ladder starts from the lowest level as a junior lecturer afterward moves to the highest level as a professor. According to Gläser & Laudel (2015), an academic career is different from other careers since there is a duty to research in the lecturer profession.
The USA is a country with universities playing the most important role in driving global trends (Marginson, 2016). The USA, the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia have the highest position in the global higher education system for many years (Choudaha & Chang, 2012;Marginson, 2006Marginson, , 2013Marginson, , 2016. Globally, competition is more prevalent at elite universities in the USA and UK. Lopez-Leyva & Rhoades (2016) conducted a study about the correlation between state competitiveness and higher education indicators. This study mentions the eight indicators of educational evaluation developed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in measuring the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). Those indicators are (1) secondary education admission; (2) higher education admission; (3) the education system quality; (4) the quality of mathematics and science education; (5) the quality of management school; (6) internet access in the school; (7) the availability of particular training service; and (8) staff training level.
Globalization and world-class university trend in the previous studies have proven that the higher education system is motivated to be more dynamic and innovative. The USA universities have proven become the world-class university trend today and followed by Australia. This comparative study will give a new insight into other countries, especially developing countries. The developing countries can take the USA's strengths and Australia's academic career advancement and combine them with their strengths. It relates to point eight of education indicators relating to career advancement. Frølich et al. (2018) mentioned that each country has different principles related to the academic career. We can see from the various academic career structures in each country. Therefore, this comparative study is needed to show how a developed country with the strongest education system can achieve a world-class higher education system primarily related to human resources development. A developing country can learn from a developed country and increase its higher education system competitiveness in a global environment.
This study's research question is comparing the academic career advancement system in the USA and Australia. The findings of the systematic review will answer this research question. Six aspects are discussed and compared in this study: regulations, educational qualifications, lecturer obligation status in the higher education, career ladder, career advancement stages, and the lecturers' duties also responsibilities in lecturer career advancement in the USA and Australia. This study aims to observe the gap between the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia comprehensively. The comparison is conducted by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of lecturer career advancement systems in the USA and Australia and comparing those results using comparative public administration theory.

Method
The systematic review method is used in this study to observe the academic career advancement articles and documents in the USA and Australia. The systematic review can answer the research question preferable since this method integrates the perspectives and empirical studies' findings (Snyder, 2019). The systematic review results are more accountable than empirical studies (Gough et al., 2012).
The systematic protocol is applied to answer the research question by searching the relevant articles and documents. The researchers used PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) as the systematic review protocol to find the relevant articles and documents. PRISMA is systematic steps to find the relevant articles and documents to be analyzed and observed (Liberati et al., 2009). The steps were: (1) determining the research questions; (2) designing review protocols by PRISMA and determining inclusion and exclusion criteria; (3) selecting the appropriate documents to be analyzed comprehensively; (4) coding the information from the findings; (5) examining and analyzing the results (Secundo et al., 2020).
The researchers used three journal databases to search the articles: Science Direct, Emerald, and EBSCOhost. However, additional documents were needed to obtain comprehensive data. The researchers also searched into Google as the search engine. The determination of the right keywords is also essential in order to find the relevant articles and documents. Table 1 shows the keywords to find the articles and documents in this study. Furthermore, the screening process will produce articles and documents that are following the topic and can be analyzed. The screening process means classifying documents according to predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The articles and documents could be continued to the analysis process when the articles and documents conformed to the inclusion criteria. However, the articles and documents could not be used in this study when the articles and documents conformed to the exclusion criteria. Table 2 shows the systematic review's inclusion and exclusion criteria of this study. The document did not contain the USA or Australia The document is not full text The document cannot answer the research question After the researchers obtained the relevant articles and documents, the next step was data analysis. The researchers used qualitative meta-aggregation from the meta-synthesis method. The stages were: (1) summarizing the themes and concepts from the relevant researches or documents; (2) organizing the summary results into significant findings; (3) grouping the findings into several categories; (4) combining the categories into a theme which related to the conceptual framework of the study (Siswanto, 2010). Furthermore, the coding process uses the help of the ATLAS.ti software. Figure 1 shows the process of finding articles in a scientific journal database illustrated in a PRISMA flow chart. The number of findings from the search results and analysis process was 30 documents. The USA documents were 14 documents that involve three qualitative studies, three quantitative studies, two reviews, four faculty handbooks, one book chapter, and one manual book. The Australian documents were 16 documents that involve eight qualitative studies, two quantitative studies, two mixed-method studies, two reviews, and two enterprise agreements.

Results and Discussion
The findings showed that most of the documents about an academic career in the USA discussed the academic career in higher education institutions in the health sector. The documents discussing the academic career in other higher education fields were still rare. Besides the health sector, the most scientific articles discussing academic careers in the USA were gender studies in the academic. In obtaining comprehensive literature, the researcher added literature from university websites in the USA about the implementation of lecturer career advancement and development policy in the USA. The researchers typed the keyword "regulation of USA faculty member career" in Google. This additional data provided examples related to Career advancement comparative perspective study of university lecturer Kurniawati, M., et al. applying career policies for lecturers at universities in the USA, such as Stanford University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard University, Virginia Polytechnic and State University or Virginia Tech, and New York University. Those universities have faculty handbooks about the lecturer guidance about university information, including the regulation.

Figure 1. The Flowchart of PRISMA Protocol
Those findings obtained exciting information. This study revealed the regulations, educational qualifications, lecturer obligation status in higher education, career ladder, career advancement stages, and the lecturers' duties also responsibilities in lecturer career advancement in the USA and Australia.

Regulation
The USA universities usually have a Faculty Handbook, which contains lecturer guidelines about university information, including the regulations of the human resources system in the university (New York University, 2020). The Faculty Handbook contains regulations approved by the Board of Visitors. The Board of Visitors involves 14 members whom the government appoints to arrange the policies. This policy contains the regulations and approval of lecturer promotion, tenured lecturer appointment, and other regulations (Virginia Tech, 2020). The lecturer's career advancement system should refer to the applicable regulation stated in the Faculty Handbook at each university.
Universities in Australia usually have an Enterprise Agreement. The Enterprise Agreement contains guidance for lecturers and some information about the university and staffing regulations (The Australian National University, 2017; University of Adelaide, 2017). It means that regulation in a university can be different from other universities.

Educational Qualification
Educational qualification is the central aspect of career advancement as a lecturer. The educational qualification for lecturers at the USA and Australian universities is a doctoral degree (Ph.D.). A Ph.D. degree will make the institution no longer need to think about the further study to a higher level. This qualification is different from developing countries that allow lecturers with master's educational qualifications.

Lecturer Obligation Status in the Higher Education Institution
Based on the analysis results of the USA lecturers' career advancement, there were several types of lecturer positions in the USA university. There are three types of lecturer positions: (1) visiting/adjunct professor; (2) lectureship; and (3) tenure-track. Visiting/adjunct professor is a part-time position or has a limited contract. Visiting professor usually replaces lecturers who are on leave or unable to teach. This position terms range between one semester to three years, and the contract renewable when it runs out. The lectureship is an adjunct lecturer with a longer term than visiting/adjunct professor. The contract lecturer ranges up to five years and renewable. Tenure-track is an adjunct lecturer who beyond a tenure review period for seven years. A doctoral degree can become an assistant professor, and they can promote as a professor five to seven years later (University of California Berkeley, 2020). However, the position name of the lecturers in other universities can be different.
For example, New York University has three types of lecturer status: (1) tenure-track faculty (permanent position); (2) full-time continuing contract faculty (by working agreement); and (3) other faculty (part-time or invited lecturer). The names may be different, yet those have the same position (New York University, 2020). Tenure can be defined as the lecturers' achievement to save their position and show their professionalism in the scientific disciplines (Guillaume & Kalkbrenner, 2019). The evaluation of administrating tenure is conducted related to the criteria and procedures of promotion and tenure. The tenure which has been given cannot be taken down (Virginia Tech, 2020). The tenure lecturers have higher mobility and workload than full-time lecturers. The annual income between the tenure-track lecturers and full-time lecturers is different (Hilmer & Hilmer, 2020).
In Australia, based on Enterprise Agreement documents of The Australian National University and the University of Adelaide, there are three types of academic contracts: casual employment, fixed-term employment, and continuing employment. Casual employment is a part-time contract. Lecturer with this contract cannot apply for promotion. Based on the roles, there are two types of academics in Australian universities: teaching-and-research and research-only. Research universities in Australia give different roles based on the academic task load. Teaching-and-research academics have the task to teach and research with balanced proportion. Research-only academic most of the time will be spent researching. There is a small load of teaching, but the main task is still researching and produce high-quality research publications.

Career Ladder
The lecturer career ladder in the USA starts from Assistant Professor. Figure 2 shows that the academic career ladder of tenure-track lecture in the USA. University of California Berkeley (2020) mentioned that most of the doctor's degrees (Ph.D.) would be asked as Assistant Professor. Afterward, they can be appointed as a Professor when they conformed to the criteria five to seven years later.  (2020) In Australia, there are two tracks of the academic career ladder: teaching and research and research-only. Figure 3 and Figure 4 show the academic career ladder in Australia. Figure 3 shows the teaching-andresearch track. Figure 4 shows the research-only track. Every level of the ladder show different requirement to achieve. The career path for lecturers in Australian universities is divided into five levels, from the lowest Level A to Level E.

Career Advancement Stages
The career advancement stages in the USA and Australia are relatively similar. The lecturer in both countries should show the physical evidence of teaching activities, research, community dedication, and other administrative (Bales et al., 2019). One of the systems to implement academic career freedom in the USA is providing tenure-track to the lecturers. Tenure means the lecturer's appointment as a tenured lecture who cannot be dismissed except for unusual reasons. Tenure provides academic freedom and works insurance for lecturers. The lecturers obtain tenure after past a six-year probationary period (Bales et al., 2019). The length of the probation period can be different for each higher education. The lecturer appointment process starts from the probation period. Figure 5 shows the timeline of the promotion period for lecturers of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. Similar to Harvard University, Virginia Tech also reviews the lecturers who on probation period in the second and fourth years or the third and fifth years. (2020) In the USA, there is an advisory board appointed by the government to determine and implement higher education regulations and approve tenure appointments. In Virginia, it is called the Board of Visitor, with fourteen members (Virginia Tech, 2020). The name of this advisory board could be different between countries. The stages, as exemplified by Stanford University, can be seen in Table 3.  (2020) Australia has slightly different stages. The lecturer with a fixed-term contract of more than six months Lecturers who have a fixed-term contract of more than six months must undergo a probation period of at least six months (University of Adelaide, 2017). The criteria for promotion are able to show evidence of activities in the field of (1) teaching includes mentoring; (2) research and creative activities; (3) administration, service, and leadership in universities; and (4) professional activities such as community service.

Figure 5. Timeline for Estimated Promotion Period Source: Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard University
In the USA and Australia, in several documents, it is stated that research publication is a significant influence on the career advancement and development of lecturers. So it is important to have a tool used to assess the impact of research. The USA and Australia use different research impact assessment tools. The USA uses Science and Technology for America's Reinvestment: Measuring the Effect of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science (STAR METRICS). Australia uses Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) (Smith et al., 2013). The objective of STAR METRICS is to create indicators of how federal investments affect research, culture, the workforce, and the economy. A database of all federally funded researchers was created and cleaned to ensure no duplications of people with the same or similar names occurred (Lane & Bertuzzi, 2011;MacIlwain, 2010). In Australia, ERA will give a rating for the research Career advancement comparative perspective study of university lecturer Kurniawati, M., et al. based on the assessment standard, from the rating one for very below world standards and rating five for very well above world standards Australian Government: Australian Research Council (2019).

Lecturers' Duties and Responsibilities
The lecturers' duties and responsibilities as an educator in higher education are related to the academic ladder. Table 4 shows the duties of each USA lecturer position. Having a responsibility similar to Assistant Professor and lecturers should show the professional achievement and the evidence of teaching, scientific creativity, and performance in impactful education in terms of academics and professional services. Professor Having a responsibility similar to Assistant Professor and lecturers should show the evidence of national or international confession as reputable academics and educators. Source: Virginia Tech (2020) Table 5 and Table 6 shows lecturer duties in The Australian National University. These duties provide an overview of how to work at other universities in Australia. The duties at other universities may be different but have broadly the same goal. Making outstanding contributions including interdisciplinary fields, contributing to governance in institutions and outside institutions, receiving national or international recognition E Professor Leading in research, teaching, and policy development in an institution, community, professional environment, or industry, recognized nationally and should be international Source: The Australian National University (2017)  (2017) Based on the findings in Table 5 and Table 6, it can be concluded that for levels D and E, the most important thing for lecturers and researchers is international recognition and leadership.
Career advancement comparative perspective study of university lecturer Kurniawati, M., et al.

Analysis of the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Lecturer Career Advancement System in the USA
Based on the literature, the results showed the strengths and weaknesses of the lecturer career advancement system in the USA. The strengths of the lecturer career advancement system in the USA are: (1) there is a periodic evaluation for Professor Tenure every five years so that motivating lecturers to improve their performance; (2) there are tenure positions to provide job security and academic freedom; (3) receiving as the Professor within seven years by following the timeline from the university; (4) the first stage of recruitment is carried out at the doctoral study; (5) tenure position allows to reduce the lecturer mobility so that the institutions can easily arrange the career advancement and development programs for lecturers at the institution. Meanwhile, the weaknesses of the lecturer career advancement system in the USA are the process to occupy a tenure position because the lecturer should be able to show their outstanding performance as evidence.

Analysis of the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Lecturer Career Advancement System in Australia
The results of the analysis show the strengths and weaknesses of the lecturer career advancement system in Australia. The strengths are: (1) Australia has a continuing employment contract for its lecturers, which means becoming a permanent lecturer, and this contract minimizes lecturers' worries about job security; (2) Australia has the same career advancement provisions at all levels from one university to another; (3) the university's framework agreement is easily accessible and contains complete information. Meanwhile, the weaknesses of the Australian lecturer career advancement system are: (1) some literature stated that academics in Australia rarely get feedback on job performance, this condition reducing the level of academic commitment to universities; (2) the large workload is one of the concerns in the career advancement system in Australia, often there are additional tasks that are too excessive, causing academics to try hard to improve their career ladder (Bexley et al., 2011).

Gap Analysis of Lecturer Career Advancement in the USA and Australia
The USA provides tenured lecturer positions. However, becoming a tenured lecturer is more difficult in the USA because it affects its funding. The institution should construct financing for the tenure position during the terms. So that only selected people can get the opportunity to become tenure. In essence, both the USA and Australia implement academic freedom for their lecturers. The lecturers are free to develop their careers through innovative activities for developing the scientific disciplines. The globalization mindset affects the relationship between lecturer and university. The tenure track in the USA and continuing employment in Australia turned out to be different concepts. Continuing employment in Australia means that the lecturer can get a permanent contract as long as he/she get research funding. From the findings, we know that both countries give permanent or tenure contracts to lecturers based on their outstanding career performance as academics. It is proof that developed countries think about efficiency. Tenure and permanent track will give the university more load in the salary of the lecturers. University leaders will choose the best candidate to grant the promotion because it will cause more load on their finances. This condition makes the atmosphere of career advancement in the developed countries more dynamic and more competitive.
There is some advice for lecturers to build their academic careers. In addition to formal education that earns a degree, it is also necessary to educate informally to increase knowledge, for example, through the professional community or scientific meetings (Miller, 2015). In the academic world, networking and personal references are very important for career development (Heller et al., 2016). Building a mutually supportive relationship is essential for career advancement (Browning et al., 2016). Leadership is needed for lecturer career advancement. This leadership skill means that to become a lecturer with a promising career, it is necessary to become a role model who can be an ideal example for others (Sherif et al., 2020). Other behaviors such as prioritizing work, working hard, and making sacrifices are behaviors that can drive success in a career (Beigi et al., 2018). Intrinsic motivation can be found when someone can recognize himself (Miller, 2015). Therefore, lecturers need to have the ability to recognize other people (Miller, 2015). Mentoring is one activity to learn about other personalities. The problem that often arises is that senior lecturers have many administrative tasks, making it difficult for senior lecturers to find time to provide mentoring to young lecturers (Lemon & Garvis, 2014). However, research by Ferguson & Wheat (2015) proves that mentoring through social media can also be done and effective. The very best strategies for young lecturers to take in developing their careers is to obtain competitive funding at the national level and carry out collaborative research (Browning et al., 2016). Australia's open to academic mobility. Academic mobility can also be described as a form of boundaryless career attitude or behavior that considers a career not limited to one skill or organization (Sherif et al., 2020).
This academic career advancement in the USA and Australia is based on the human capital concept. One strategy to implement this concept is to implement talent management. The talent management process is carried out in three ways, namely talent attraction, talent development, and talent retention (Mohammed et al., 2020a(Mohammed et al., , 2020bMohammed et al., 2019a;2019b). The talent management process is important to produce lecturers with high qualifications (Mohammed et al., 2019b). If accepted as a lecturer, the university has decided that the person's skills are what the university needs (Mohammed et al., 2019a). Institutions must provide suitable training and are needed by lecturers and provide career advancement and development programs (Mohammed et al., 2020a).

Conclusion
A systematic review study showed a comparison between the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia. The comparisons can be seen from the six aspects of the analysis reviewed and compared: regulations, educational qualifications, lecturer engagement status in higher education, career ladder, career advancement stages, and duties as well as responsibilities in the lecturer career advancement in the USA and Australia. The systematic review study can capture and analyze the gap between the lecturer career advancement system in the USA and Australia. Based on this study findings, the gap between the USA and Australia is not that far away. The strengths and weaknesses in each country show that there is a slightly similar system in a developed country to another developed country. This comparison is an implementation of comparative public administration. The academic career advancement in the USA and Australia shows that they take serious concern about the human capital concept, especially on talent management. This study will give new insight to developing countries to combine their system with the strengths of the developed country and will produce new academic career policies. Hopefully, their new policies about academic career advancement will drive their higher education compete globally.