A recent NCFDD survey revealed a stark mismatch between the needs of faculty and institutional investment. Dr. Xueli Wang, the Barbara and Glenn Thompson Endowed Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of Delivering Promise: Equity-Driven Educational Change and Innovation in Community and Technical Colleges, said that gap is even worse for faculty from marginalized backgrounds.
“Right now, we are asking faculty and staff to carry more, emotionally, intellectually, structurally, while they themselves are often stretched thin or burned out,” said Wang. “Faculty from historically marginalized backgrounds are often doing additional invisible labor, so when faculty well-being isn’t centered, those inequities further deepen.”
In Delivering Promise, Wang argues that institutions have to be both student-first and educator-first. “You simply can’t sustain one without the other," she said.
The NCFDD survey found that while institutional expectations for results remain high, administrative assistance is largely absent due to resource constraints. This means faculty are often left to rely on personal networks or sheer luck to succeed; 64 percent of respondents reported they rely on peer networks for support, and 54 percent on department colleagues in lieu of institution-wide communities and formal platforms.
One area that remains a persistent challenge is in balancing expectations around how – and whether – to use artificial intelligence in their classrooms, according to the survey. Rather than mandates, faculty want frameworks for engaging AI in ways that align with their values and preserve intellectual integrity.
“Without clear direction, a lot of this becomes individual trial and error, which can feel both freeing and isolating," Wang explained, adding that she herself is equally concerned and willing to adapt to the changing landscape explained about her equal concerns and willing adaptiveness with AI, “I think what’s missing is shared sensemaking through intentionally crafted spaces where faculty can work through these questions together, rather than each person trying to resolve them alone.”
However, finding the time for this "shared sensemaking" is difficult when the academic plate is already full. To Wang, the push for AI adoption isn't just a pedagogical hurdle; it is a capacity issue that forces a difficult conversation about what tasks must be sacrificed to make room for innovation.
“If you are asking faculty to take on something new, whether it is AI integration, student support, or assessment, what are you taking off their plate?” Wang asked. “It’s about reimagining and revisiting workloads, creating time, and sending a message that faculty well-being is not an afterthought. Otherwise, it becomes performative, maybe well-intentioned, but in fact disconnected from lived reality.”
Wang said the disconnect often stems from a cultural misunderstanding of why faculty are struggling. Rather than viewing exhaustion as a symptom of an overstuffed curriculum or administrative bloat, many institutions frame it as a personal failing—a perspective Wang argues is fundamentally flawed.
“We have to stop treating burnout as an individual resilience issue and start addressing it as a structural one," she said. “Faculty have been incredibly adaptive over the past several years, but adaptation without recovery just leads to depletion.”
Moving beyond mere adaptation requires a systemic overhaul of the academic calendar and institutional expectations. For Wang, the solution isn't found in a wellness seminar, but in a radical shift in how universities value the "output" of their staff versus the health of their community.
“Ending the burnout loop means building in restoration, not just expecting continuous output. It also means rethinking what we reward and normalize and moving away from constant overextension as a marker of commitment,” said Wang. “And importantly, it requires institutions to listen differently. The question is whether we willing to act on that feedback in ways that reimagine faculty work and load rather than simply adding to it.”
