U.S. colleges and universities are struggling to recover from one of their most difficult years in recent history. In 2025, higher education institutions cut more than 9,000 faculty and staff positions amid fluctuating enrollment, shrinking budgets, and growing doubts about the worth of a college degree.
Consequently, schools face mounting pressure to discover efficiencies via new technologies and infrastructure. While these expenditures are significant, they frequently overlook the central mechanism that drives student achievement: faculty.
Decades of research indicate that how instructors design, deliver, and support learning remains one of higher education’s most effective tools for promoting student retention and graduation. When institutions equip faculty with resources to innovate and implement proven educational reforms, their students pass courses at higher rates, making them more likely to continue into subsequent terms and finish college.
Despite this evidence, however, faculty professional development continues to be persistently underfunded.
At numerous institutions, professional learning for faculty is disjointed, comprising optional workshops, single-session trainings, or occasional conference participation. Too often, schools treat teaching as an innate skill rather than a complex, evolving practice that benefits from ongoing support.
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Effective faculty development is neither simple nor rapid. Institutions that achieve meaningful improvements in student learning and completion invest in it deeply and consistently, regardless of their type or financial situation.
They engage with faculty over time, establish communities of practice, and explicitly connect professional learning to student results. They also acknowledge that enhancing teaching demands the same rigor as improving advising systems, redesigning math pathways, and introducing new technologies.
Over the past fifteen years, colleges have made student completion a central priority. They have upgraded data systems, refined advising models, and expanded academic support frameworks.
Professional learning for faculty, however, has not received the same level of attention, and it should.
If institutions aim to make headway, they must move beyond fragmented efforts and commit to comprehensive, evidence-based faculty development aligned with institutional objectives.
This means linking teaching, assessment, technology, and student support strategies so that improvements in one area reinforce progress in others.
It also means embedding professional learning into institutional systems rather than leaving it on the periphery, where it is easily overlooked.
At Louisiana State University, Shreveport, for instance, improving teaching is not treated as a side initiative but as central to student success. Faculty receive high-impact professional learning to strengthen instruction in gateway courses where students are most prone to struggle.
The university deliberately aligns faculty development with a strategy to enhance student learning and boost success in the courses most critical to degree completion.
The most effective faculty development efforts are practical and outcome-oriented. Faculty should lead with concrete plans, redesigned curricula, new course structures, and revised assessments, and receive support to examine how those changes affect student learning and retention.
Professional development should be grounded in research on what improves learning, both broadly and within the specific context of a given institution.
Crucially, it cannot be treated as a single occurrence.
Improving teaching is an ongoing process, built through cycles of experimentation, feedback, reflection, and refinement.
Related: A ‘great defection’ threatens to empty colleges and universities of top talent
Texas Southern University, a public HBCU in Houston, established a center designed to support continuous improvement for its educators, treating faculty development as a core component of the university’s academic infrastructure.
The center focuses on helping instructors strengthen their classroom practice in ways that directly influence student outcomes, and it also supports faculty who serve as teaching leaders within departments.
Faculty cannot fully engage in this work, however, without psychological and career safety. They need assurance that leaders will not penalize them for trying something new and failing, and they need encouragement to keep attempting.
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That is why institutions and policymakers who take faculty development seriously must create conditions for genuine growth. And that means building cultures where leaders and faculty expect—not merely tolerate—learning through experimentation.
Finally, faculty development should address well-being and sustainability. Research shows that more than half of college faculty and staff have considered quitting due to burnout, increased workloads, and stress.
When schools invest in professional learning that acknowledges the mental labor of teaching and allows for reflection, growth, and development, they are not only supporting faculty but also safeguarding the long-term capacity of their institutions.
Improving and sustaining gains in college completion will require many strategies. But none will succeed without meaningful investment in the people who teach and support students every day. Colleges cannot claim to value teaching while also expecting faculty to improve their craft on their own time and with minimal support.
If higher education leaders want to achieve lasting progress toward improving college completion, they must ensure that meaningful, student-success-oriented faculty development is central to that effort and not an afterthought.
Janelle Jennings-Alexander is strategy director for Complete College America, a national advocate for increasing college completion rates and closing institutional performance gaps.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about faculty professional development was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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by Janelle Jennings-Alexander, The Hechinger Report June 8, 2026