America’s colleges and universities are reeling from one of the most difficult years in recent memory. In 2025, establishments laid off more than 9,000 faculty and staff amid volatile enrollment, 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 primary driver that determines 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 lead proven educational reforms, their students pass courses at higher rates, and are therefore more likely to persist into subsequent terms and complete their university studies.
Yet, despite this evidence, professional development of teachers remains chronically underfunded.
In many institutions, professional training for teachers is fragmented and consists of optional workshops, one-off training sessions or sporadic participation in conferences. Too often, institutions view teaching as a skill that one either has or does not have. In reality, it is a complex and evolving practice which improves with sustained support.
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Effective faculty development is neither easy nor quick. Institutions that see significant gains in learning and completion invest 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 launching new technologies.
Over the past fifteen years, colleges have made college completion a central goal. They have improved data systems, improved advising models, and expanded academic support structures.
However, professional learning for teachers has not received the same level of attention, 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.
This means linking instruction, assessment, technology, and student support strategies so that improvements in one area reinforce progress in others.
It also means integrating professional learning into institutional systems rather than leaving it on the margins, where it is easy to ignore.
At Louisiana State University in Shreveport, for example, improving teaching is seen not as a tangential initiative, but as an essential component of student success. Teachers are high impact professional learning strengthen teaching in the gateway course in which students are most likely to experience difficulty.
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 results-oriented. Faculty should lead by example with concrete plans, redesigned curricula, new course structures, and revised assessments, and receive support to examine how these changes affect student learning and persistence.
Professional development should be based on research into what improves learning, both generally and in the specific context of a given institution.
Above all, this cannot be treated as a one-off event.
Teaching improvement 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 the continuous improvement of its educators and views faculty development as an essential part of the university’s academic infrastructure.
The center aims to help instructors strengthen their classroom practices in ways that directly influence student outcomes, and it also supports faculty who serve as instructional leaders within departments.
However, teachers cannot fully engage in this work without psychological and professional safety. They need to know that leaders won’t penalize them for trying something new and missing the mark, and they need to be encouraged to keep trying.
That’s why institutions and policymakers that take faculty development seriously must create the conditions for real growth. And that means building cultures where leaders and teachers expect – and don’t just 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 burnoutincreased workload and stress.
When schools invest in professional learning that recognizes the mental work of teaching and allows for reflection, growth, and development, they not only support faculty but also protect the long-term capacity of their institutions.
Improving and maintaining college completion gains will require numerous strategies. But none will succeed without a significant investment in the people who teach and support students every day. Colleges cannot say they value teaching while expecting professors to improve their skills 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-focused educational development is at the heart of that effort, not an afterthought.
Janelle Jennings-Alexander is director of strategy 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 on faculty professional development was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
The article OPINION: In a time of uncertainty and increasing public scrutiny, colleges should invest in faculty to drive student success, appeared first in the Hechinger report.
