The lecturer of Universitas Terbuka (UT) in today era faces tremandous obstacle in achieving
their job promotion. Most of them have been able only to achieved assistant professor degree
in career rank (52,7%). The fact of the matter, at UT departments which are Economics
Faculty, Social and Politic Sciences Faculty, and Mathematic and Natural Sciences Faculty,
have not had professorship job position, eventhough they have already been having 29 years
long lecturing services. The critical obstacle level to get higher promotion in UT lecturer
career path is that has been laid on reaching job position from assistant professor to
associate professor. Many of those lecturers have failed proposing their higer job’s position,
from assistant professor to associate Professor, were due to the Ministery of Education
refusal of their proposition, since the prerequisited research credits as one the many
prerequisition to be met was considered unqualified. To inquire what the causes are, using
qualitative approach. The method used was descriptive. Then, data collected were using
document study, in-depth interview, and participant observation. The data obtained, further
was analyzed descriptive qualitative. The theoretical framework in the analysis was using the
Minzberg’s Five Disciplines and the Bureaucracy of Max Weber. The present work found out
that the difficulty of the lecturers in achieving their job’s promotion was caused by “the jobexchange”
happened among support staff and operating core, such as: support staff rolled
into operating core and vice versa. Furthermore, this research concluded that the lecturers of
UT are having difficulty in achieving their job’s promotion since his/her academic
competency is considered weak resulted from the deviated institutional policy from the
prevailed regulations.