Why Faculty Overload Should Be Treated as an Institutional Warning Light
This month, I published an article in The ACAD Leader titled “Unwinding the Faculty Overload Trap: Costs, Consequences, and Ways Forward.” It is a topic many campuses quietly acknowledge but rarely confront with the urgency it deserves. Overload has become so normalized that we often forget it was meant to be temporary. Today, it functions more like an invisible form of deferred maintenance, not on buildings or technology, but on people.
In the article, I argue that overload is not simply a scheduling issue or a symptom of faculty burnout. It is a structural signal. When overload becomes routine, it reveals something deeper: misalignment between programs, staffing, workload, and mission. It also affects the very heart of academic life. Advising weakens, relationships with students thin out, time for thoughtful feedback shrinks, and the work starts to feel like survival rather than purpose.
The article calls for three shifts.
First, institutions need visibility. Mapping overload—where it happens, why it persists, and how it varies across programs—turns guesswork into actionable insight.
Second, we need more realistic workload models that reflect the full scope of faculty responsibilities, not just credit hours on paper.
Third, we need courage. Addressing overload requires leaders who are willing to speak plainly about program viability, compensation, staffing, and the limits of what one institution can sustainably offer.
None of this is easy. But the alternative is a continued slow erosion of the very relationships, mentoring, and intellectual engagement that define quality teaching and learning. Students feel the difference. Faculty feel it even more.
My hope is that the piece helps campuses start the harder, more honest conversations about what their academic workforce needs to thrive. Overload can be reduced. Programs can be realigned. Workload models can be rethought. But progress comes only when institutions treat faculty labor as an indicator of institutional health rather than an expendable resource.
If we want academic excellence to be sustainable, we have to build systems that make good work possible. That begins with seeing overload for what it really is: a warning light we can no longer afford to ignore.