For many years, faculty development was positioned as enrichment. Valuable, but optional. Helpful, but not central. Something institutions offered to support individual growth rather than to sustain core academic functions.
Findings from the State of Faculty Development 2026 survey suggest that framing no longer reflects faculty reality. Increasingly, faculty describe professional development as necessary support for sustaining research, navigating workload, maintaining well-being, and preparing for leadership responsibilities. In practice, faculty development support is already helping academic work function.
The Older Model: Faculty Development as Optional Enrichment
Historically, institutions treated faculty development as additive. Workshops, seminars, or small grants designed to expand skills or explore new interests. Participation was encouraged but rarely tied to institutional stability, productivity, or retention.
This model assumed relatively stable academic conditions:
- predictable funding pathways
- manageable workload expectations
- informal mentoring structures
- gradual leadership preparation
Under those conditions, development could reasonably sit outside core institutional support.
What the 2026 Data Show Has Changed in Faculty Development
The 2026 survey suggests those assumptions no longer hold. Faculty reported high need across multiple areas directly tied to institutional functioning (see high-need support areas, p. 11):
- Faculty well-being
- Writing and publishing productivity
- Mentoring and faculty development
- Leadership development
At the same time, faculty described increasing personal reliance on development resources while perceiving uneven or declining institutional investment (pp. 7–8).
This combination matters. When faculty need structured support to sustain core academic work, faculty development support becomes part of the operating environment.
Why Underinvestment in Faculty Development Now Creates Institutional Risk
When development is treated as discretionary under current conditions, several institutional risks emerge.
Burnout and attrition risk
Faculty described development spaces as the primary place they receive structured support for workload management, boundaries, and recovery. Without these supports, well-being challenges translate into retention risk.
Research productivity risk
Writing accountability groups, structured proposal development programs, and mentoring networks function as productivity support for many faculty. Removing or limiting them disrupts output, not just enrichment.
Leadership pipeline risk
Leadership preparation increasingly occurs through development programs rather than informal apprenticeship. Gaps in faculty development support translate directly into chair and dean readiness gaps.
In this context, development investment functions less like professional perk and more like capacity maintenance.
What Core Faculty Development Support Looks Like
Treating faculty development as essential institutional support does not mean expanding programming indiscriminately. It means aligning support with how academic work actually functions now.
Institutions approaching development at this level tend to share several characteristics:
- predictable, sustained access rather than episodic offerings
- support tied to core academic tasks such as writing, mentoring, leadership, and workload
- structures that reduce isolation and distribute expertise
- integration with faculty career stages and institutional priorities
- leadership visibility and normalization of participation
The distinction is less about scale than about positioning. Core faculty development support is expected, stable, and embedded in institutional operations.
Questions Leaders Should Be Asking Now
The survey findings suggest several strategic questions for provosts and faculty affairs leaders:
- Where are faculty currently relying on external or informal development to sustain core work?
- Which development supports function as productivity or retention stabilizers?
- Are these supports predictable and equitably accessible across units?
- How is leadership preparation currently occurring in practice?
- What would be disrupted if existing development resources disappeared?
These questions shift the conversation from programming inventory to institutional dependence.
Faculty Are Already Relying on Development Support
Across open-ended responses, faculty repeatedly described development spaces as necessary for sustaining research momentum, maintaining well-being, and navigating institutional demands. Many characterized these supports as the only consistent place they could access structured mentoring, accountability, or leadership preparation.
This language reflects a quiet but significant shift. Faculty are already treating development support as essential, regardless of how institutions categorize it.
The Institutional Implication
The central finding is not simply that faculty want more development. It is that professional development now supports functions institutions depend on: research productivity, leadership continuity, and faculty sustainability. As the report concludes, faculty development has shifted from a supplemental function to a core institutional concern.
At the same time, faculty consistently describe wanting agency in how they engage these supports. They are not asking for more prescribed programming, but for access to development opportunities they can choose and use in ways that align with their work, career stage, and goals (see faculty agency and autonomy, p. 19).
As these supports become more central to academic work, ensuring they are accessible, flexible, and faculty-directed becomes increasingly important. Recognizing this shift helps leaders align faculty development with core priorities in faculty affairs, research development, and academic leadership.
Read the full findings in the State of Faculty Development 2026 report.
