U.S. colleges and universities are reeling from one of the most challenging years in recent memory. In 2025, institutions laid off more than 9,000 faculty and staff amid enrollment volatility, shrinking budgets and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree.
As a result, institutions are under increasing pressure to find efficiencies through new technologies and infrastructure. While these investments are important, they often bypass the core engine driving student outcomes: faculty.
Decades of research show that how instructors design, deliver and support learning remains one of higher education’s most powerful levers for supporting student persistence and completion. When institutions give faculty the resources to innovate and carry out proven education reforms, their students pass courses at higher rates, and are thus more likely to persist into subsequent terms and complete college.
Yet despite this evidence, faculty professional development remains chronically underfunded.
At many institutions, professional learning for faculty is fragmented, consisting of optional workshops, one-off training sessions or sporadic conference attendance. Too often, institutions treat teaching as a skill you either have or you don’t. In reality, it’s a complex, evolving practice that improves with sustained support.
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Effective faculty development isn’t easy or quick. Institutions that see meaningful gains in student learning and completion invest in it deeply and consistently, regardless of institution type and financial profile.
They engage with faculty over time, build communities of practice and explicitly link professional learning to student outcomes. They also recognize that improving teaching requires the same seriousness as improving advising systems, redesigning math pathways and initiating new technologies.
Over the past decade and a half, colleges have made student completion a central goal. They have enhanced data systems, improved advising models and expanded academic support structures.
Professional learning for faculty, however, has not seen the same level of focus, and it should.
If institutions want to make progress, they must move beyond piecemeal efforts and commit to comprehensive, evidence-based faculty development aligned with institutional goals.
That means connecting teaching, assessment, technology and student support strategies so improvements in one area reinforce progress in others.
It also means embedding professional learning into institutional systems rather than leaving it on the margins, where it is easy to ignore.
At Louisiana State University, Shreveport, for example, improving teaching is not treated as a tangential initiative, but as core to student success. Faculty get high-impact professional learning to strengthen instruction in the gateway courses in which students are most likely to struggle.
The university intentionally aligns faculty development with a plan to strengthen student learning and improve success in the courses most critical to degree completion.
The most effective faculty development efforts are practical and focused on results. 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 persistence.
Professional development should be grounded in research about what improves learning, both broadly and within the specific context of a given institution.
Crucially, it cannot be treated as a one-time event.
Improving teaching is an ongoing process, built through cycles of experimentation, feedback, reflection and refinement.
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Texas Southern University, a public HBCU in Houston, launched a center designed to support continuous improvement for its educators, and treats faculty development as a core part 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 can’t engage fully in this work, however, without psychological and career safety. They need to know leaders won’t penalize them for trying something new and missing the mark and they need to be encouraged to keep trying.
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 protecting 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 say that they value teaching while also expecting faculty to improve their craft on their own time and with minimal support.
If higher education leaders want to make 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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