The Evolving Role of Faculty: Navigating Change in Higher Education
"How faculty work is being reshaped by reforms, market demands, and new expectations."
The role of faculty in higher education is undergoing significant changes, especially since the late 1990s. As higher education is increasingly seen as a driver of economic development, the work of professors has garnered special attention. Researchers from various theoretical and political perspectives are keenly interested in how faculty activities are evolving.
Analyzing faculty work in higher education is a complex yet vital task. Ongoing reforms are reshaping the goals of education, which directly impacts the responsibilities and activities of faculty. The Brazilian State Reform, initiated in the mid-1990s, serves as a key reference point for understanding the shifting role of higher education within governmental strategies. This reform has led to continuous changes in higher education, keeping it prominently on government agendas.
This article examines the relationship between these broad changes—specifically, the reform of the state and higher education—and the work of faculty. It seeks to identify the connections between these shifts and to understand the paths educators are being urged to take to adapt to this evolving educational environment.
Faculty Standards and Development
The Manhattan Institute’s model legislation would require governing boards to publicly review, certify, and annually approve required general-education courses, assessing whether they are foundational, civically relevant, and worthy of public investment. Faculty development can be constrained by limited time and resources, as well as inexperience using student data to make iterative instructional improvements. A proposed set of Faculty Standards frames technology integration across six roles: Instructor, Coordinator, Leader, Researcher, Learner, and Contributor.
A Changing Faculty Landscape
The state of higher-education faculty has changed dramatically since the first colleges and universities opened in the United States, according to Education Writers Association’s 2021 overview. Broader histories of higher education trace its development from ancient traditions to modern universities, while accounts focused on the United States examine the institutions and documents that shaped its system. The available sources frame faculty change as part of this longer institutional evolution but do not specify particular faculty milestones.
The Shifting Sands: How State Reform Impacts Higher Education
The state reform has redefined higher education by considering it a non-exclusive service. This shift allows various social organizations, including non-state public entities, to offer higher education services, necessitating regulatory and evaluative mechanisms. The government's role has evolved into defining objectives and evaluating outcomes based on efficiency, effectiveness, and quality, largely dictated by market demands. This transition positions the state as a regulator and evaluator, adapting to new functions.
- Market Demands: Adapting education to meet the needs of the market.
- Evolving Roles: Questioning traditional university roles and functions.
- Faculty Metamorphosis: Transforming faculty responsibilities and distancing them from traditional functions.
Entrepreneurial Faculties and Career Concerns
Research on teaching careers in entrepreneurial faculties discusses risks associated with the commodification of education. The cited literature links that concern to potential negative consequences for professional identity formation and satisfaction with teaching careers. A related review of career perceptions among teaching staff in Brazilian entrepreneurial faculties likewise identifies risks to professional identity and career-related outcomes.
Structural Pressures and Faculty Workload
A 2026 commentary argues that reform agendas become more tractable when structural pressures shaping faculty behavior are understood, and interprets faculty members’ increasing turn to unions as evidence of institutional failure. A 2025 account of faculty workload describes it as an issue affecting instructor morale and educational quality, citing empirical research that associates higher workloads with lower educational quality. These sources suggest that reform efforts may be limited when working conditions and institutional pressures are left unaddressed.
Reform, Governance, and Workforce Design
A 2025 analysis of a competency-based-education dispute in California highlights the limits of top-down classroom initiatives. A 2024 study of governance through faculty reports that governance challenges negatively affected faculty satisfaction and recommends transparent leadership, participatory organizational culture, and proactive responses to change. Separately, a TIAA report argues that an intentionally designed faculty workforce model drawing on research about learning, faculty work, instructional design, and workforce models from other fields could benefit U.S. higher education and improve student outcomes.
Navigating the Future: Resistance and Adaptation
The regulatory policies driving these changes have not been universally embraced. Intellectuals and social movements are voicing opposition. Critiques highlight the loss of the university's core purpose as it becomes subject to market forces. Some suggest that universities are adopting marketing tactics to compensate for funding shortages and seek new identities.
Rethinking Academic Work
Rethinking Faculty Work: Higher Education’s Strategic Imperative analyzes the current and changing context of academic work. The book offers a framework for understanding faculty work and considers its strategic importance to higher education. The available source description does not provide further details about the framework or its recommendations.
Reform Opportunities and Institutional Priorities
Deloitte’s 2026 higher-education trends report describes negative public sentiment and pressure on most funding sources as a rare opportunity to overcome inertia and pursue fundamental reform. The Higher Learning Commission’s Trends 2026 report presents trends as unprioritized and encourages institutions to identify strategic directions in service of students and communities. Hanover Research’s 2026 trends report specifically lists workforce skill-building plans among the issues and solutions shaping higher education.
Institutional Conditions for Faculty Change
Faculty pedagogical development takes place amid demographic shifts, financial pressures, and an increasingly diverse student body. A 2025 discussion of systemic student-success reforms identifies a major challenge: creating conditions for faculty to collaborate productively, continually improve their practice, and partner with student-services educators on student exploration and planning. Reforming promotion and tenure systems is another area of institutional change; a Pew scan describes efforts to reward research and related work that explicitly advances policy or practice. A TIAA Institute report identifies goals for appointment and reward reforms including transparency, mission alignment, expanded impact measures, access and equity, flexibility, and accountability.
Collaboration in Curriculum and Classroom Change
A case study examined a four-year collaborative curriculum review process involving administrators and faculty at a higher-education institution. A separate article reports a process-oriented model for developing faculty and students in evolving academic environments, describing its scale as 500 faculty, 39 classrooms, and six years. The article situates the model against a broader challenge: despite investment in active-learning infrastructure, few universities have orchestrated campus stakeholders and pedagogical reform at scale.
Accountability, with its emphasis on performance metrics, is a key element of these reforms. Funding is increasingly tied to indicators like enrollment rates and cost per student, reflecting a market-oriented approach. This contrasts with traditional academic values that prioritize the process of knowledge creation and scholarly inquiry.
Despite the challenges, it is crucial to recognize the agency of faculty in shaping the future of higher education. Organized resistance, particularly through faculty movements and unions, can help protect the rights and working conditions of educators. Ultimately, the goal is to advocate for a public, high-quality university system that serves the interests of society, redefining the role of faculty in this evolving landscape.