In August 2020, co-author Bradley Fuster published an editorial about faculty transitioning to ‘The Dark Side’, i.e., moving into an administrative role during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we offer a recontextualized view of the trends, opportunities, and challenges faculty face when taking on increased administrative responsibilities amidst the increasing pressure of financial constraints, declining enrollment, aging infrastructure, polarizing AI-policy viewpoints, challenging federal positions, and internal promotion practices. “The Dark Side” shift remains a complex and oft misunderstood career trajectory. Faculty may purposefully seek these opportunities or embrace them for a variety of external and internal considerations. Regardless of the pathway leading to administrative leadership, we offer the following thoughts gleaned from a combined 50-plus years in higher education to help inform the journey.
Teaching Expectations Often Reduced While Other Expectations Are Not
A structural challenge in higher education emerges through the allocation of course releases to high-performing faculty who assume essential administrative responsibilities. Institutions frequently rely on energetic and capable faculty members to coordinate General Education programs, lead institutional or discipline-specific accreditation efforts, and design or manage new academic programs. When these assignments are expected of early-career faculty who demonstrate initiative and institutional commitment, a tension of priorities invariably arises.
Course releases are intended to create the time necessary to carry out these responsibilities effectively. However, while teaching expectations are reduced, research, advising, and service expectations typically remain unchanged. Faculty in pre-tenure or pre-promotion stages face the simultaneous demands of administrative leadership and the sustained scholarly productivity required for advancement. The result may create a structural imbalance in which the institution benefits from the administrative contributions of these faculty members, while the individual bears the cumulative burden of competing professional expectations during the most consequential years of their academic career.
The long-term implications of this arrangement can be particularly problematic when faculty members who build substantial administrative portfolios transition into full-time administrative roles before attaining the rank of professor. Promotion pathways are typically structured around sustained scholarly output and disciplinary impact, expectations that can become difficult to maintain once administrative duties expand. Without having secured promotion to professor, these individuals may find themselves in positions in which future advancement becomes structurally constrained. The absence of the professor rank can limit mobility within academic leadership pathways and weaken competitiveness for senior roles at other institutions. In effect, faculty who accept significant institutional responsibilities early in their careers may be rewarded with positions that unintentionally narrow their long-term professional options. For this reason, institutional leaders should carefully consider the relationship between course releases, administrative assignments, and promotion trajectories. Policies that assign administrative duties to faculty must account for the research expectations associated with the path to full professor so that early career administrative service does not inadvertently create a professional dead end.
The Good/Bad (and Ugly) Paradox
A persistent trend in higher education is the elevation of highly effective faculty members into administrative roles, often justified as a way to leverage their expertise for institutional leadership. While this practice may appear rational from an organizational perspective, it frequently produces unintended consequences for the academic core of the institution. The most accomplished faculty members are often those who demonstrate exceptional skill in teaching, mentorship, and disciplinary engagement. When these individuals are removed from the classroom, students lose direct access to educators who are most capable of fostering intellectual development and modeling scholarly rigor.
Institutions commonly attempt to fill the resulting instructional gaps with adjunct faculty. Although adjunct instructors can contribute valuable expertise, their contingent status, limited institutional integration, and constrained time for student engagement often mean that the educational experience cannot fully replicate the depth of interaction that full time faculty provide. In this sense, the institutional decision to redirect strong teachers into administrative structures can unintentionally diminish the student engagement inherent in undergraduate and graduate learning. For example, at many small institutions, the faculty member running the Center for Teaching and Learning is likely one of the best pedagogues on campus, and ironically, is teaching fewer classes in exchange for this service.
The alternative practice of appointing underperforming faculty members to administrative positions raises a different but equally serious concern. When individuals who have struggled to demonstrate excellence in teaching or scholarship are placed in leadership roles, the credibility of academic governance may be undermined. Faculty and students alike often interpret programmatic decisions through the lens of the administrator’s prior academic performance. As a result, curricular direction, faculty evaluation, and strategic planning may be perceived as lacking scholarly authority or pedagogical insight. Effective academic leadership requires both intellectual legitimacy and the trust of the academic community. When leadership emerges from individuals whose faculty records are regarded as weak, the political dynamics of departments and programs can become strained, and confidence in institutional decision-making may erode. In this way, promoting underperforming faculty into administrative roles risks transferring weaknesses from the classroom into the governance structure of the institution.
Over-reliance on a Small Group of “Institutional Citizens”
A notable pattern within contemporary academic institutions is the repeated reliance on a small cohort of highly effective faculty to carry out essential service and governance functions. We have seen this issue repeatedly arise in our experiences. These individuals are frequently called upon to serve on key committees, lead accreditation efforts, respond to institutional crises, and participate in strategic initiatives. While their competence and institutional commitment make them natural choices for such roles, this pattern creates an uneven distribution of labor that is rarely formalized but widely understood. Over time, these faculty members become indispensable to institutional functioning, yet this indispensability is accompanied by a cumulative burden that extends well beyond standard expectations of service. The result is a stratified system in which a subset of faculty sustains the operational and governance infrastructure of the institution, often at significant personal and professional cost.
The imbalance has important implications for both faculty development and institutional sustainability. Faculty who are repeatedly tapped for service may experience diminished capacity to focus on research and teaching, particularly during critical periods of career advancement. Meanwhile, other faculty may remain under-engaged in institutional life, limiting the development of a broader culture of shared governance. The concentration of service responsibilities in a small group also introduces risk, as institutional continuity becomes dependent on the availability and goodwill of a few individuals. Addressing this issue requires a more intentional distribution of service obligations, as well as recognition systems that align institutional reliance with meaningful professional reward.
Misalignment Between Service Expectations and Reward Structures
A persistent tension in higher education lies in the disconnect between the stated value of faculty service and the criteria used for promotion and advancement. Institutions routinely emphasize the importance of service, particularly in areas such as governance, accreditation, and program development, framing these contributions as essential to institutional success. However, promotion and tenure systems continue to privilege research productivity and, to a lesser extent, teaching effectiveness as the primary markers of academic achievement. This misalignment creates a structural contradiction in which faculty are encouraged to contribute to institutional functioning but are not proportionally rewarded for doing so. As a result, service becomes both necessary and professionally risky, particularly for faculty navigating early and mid-career advancement.
The consequences of this misalignment extend beyond individual faculty experiences to shape broader patterns of institutional engagement. Faculty members who recognize the limited impact of service on promotion outcomes may strategically minimize their participation, leaving essential work to those who are either more institutionally committed or less attuned to the long-term implications. Faculty who invest heavily in service may find their contributions undervalued in formal evaluation processes, creating frustration and potential stagnation in career progression. Aligning reward structures with institutional expectations requires a recalibration of promotion criteria to more fully account for the intellectual and organizational labor inherent in meaningful service.
Expansion of Administrative Responsibilities Without Role Clarity
Another emerging trend is the expansion of administrative responsibilities assigned to faculty without corresponding clarity in role definition, authority, or support. Faculty members tasked with coordinating programs, leading assessment efforts, or managing accreditation processes are often given broad mandates that lack clear boundaries or operational frameworks. These roles frequently evolve in response to immediate institutional needs rather than through deliberate design, resulting in expectations that are both expansive and ambiguous. Without formal training, dedicated staff support, or clearly articulated lines of authority, faculty in these positions must navigate complex administrative landscapes while balancing their remaining teaching and research obligations.
This lack of structure can lead to inefficiencies at both the individual and institutional levels. Faculty may spend significant time interpreting expectations, negotiating responsibilities, and resolving operational challenges that could be mitigated through clearer role design. At the same time, the absence of defined authority can limit the effectiveness of these roles, as faculty may be held accountable for outcomes without the ability to enact necessary changes. Over time, this dynamic contributes to frustration, burnout, and uneven program quality. Institutions would benefit from formalizing these roles with explicit scopes, appropriate resources, and alignment with broader administrative structures to ensure both effectiveness and sustainability.
Early-Career Service Trap for Underrepresented Faculty and Highly Enrolled Majors
It is well documented that faculty from underrepresented backgrounds are often called upon to engage in disproportionate levels of service, particularly in areas related to student support, mentorship, and diversity initiatives. These contributions are frequently driven by both institutional need and student demand, as well as by a sense of personal commitment. While this work is critical to fostering inclusive academic environments, it is often informal, time-intensive, and insufficiently recognized within formal evaluation systems. As a result, early-career faculty from underrepresented groups may carry a heavier service burden than their peers while simultaneously navigating the same expectations for research and teaching.
This dynamic can exacerbate existing inequities in career progression. The additional time devoted to service reduces the capacity for sustained scholarly output, which remains central to promotion and tenure decisions. Over time, this can lead to disparities in advancement, retention, and overall career satisfaction. Institutions that seek to promote equity must move beyond symbolic recognition of this labor and develop mechanisms to account for it meaningfully in workload distribution and evaluation processes. Without such changes, the reliance on underrepresented faculty for essential institutional functions risks reinforcing the very inequities these efforts aim to address.
Concluding Thoughts
Faculty moving to “The Dark Side” is no longer an occasional cost-saving strategy but is a regular occurrence in contemporary academic life. As faculty increasingly move between scholarly and administrative domains, institutions must reconsider how these roles are structured, supported, and valued. Below is a list of useful considerations for institutional administrators to consider when asking faculty to straddle the academic/administrative tightrope;
- Adjust tenure, promotion, and service expectations when faculty assume substantial administrative assignments.
- Define administrative roles with clear scope, authority, duration, and reporting lines before appointments begin.
- Avoid relying repeatedly on the same small group of high-performing institutional citizens.
- Ensure that course releases are matched by proportional adjustments to research, advising, and service expectations.
- Recognize administrative leadership as substantive academic labor in annual review, promotion, and workload policies.
- Provide faculty administrators with staff support, leadership development, and access to relevant institutional data. Oftentimes it is most beneficial for leadership development and access to relevant institutional data is best provided in advance of moving into administration, as this will help faculty members discern their best role and timing of the move.
- Establish exit ramps that allow faculty to return to teaching and scholarship without professional penalty. This may include a prorated tenure or promotion clock for appointments beyond a defined period.
- Monitor service loads for early-career faculty, underrepresented faculty, and faculty in high-demand programs so that they aren’t disproportionately large.
- Avoid using administrative appointments as substitutes for addressing poor teaching, weak scholarship, or unresolved personnel issues.
- Protect student learning by planning carefully for instructional gaps created when strong faculty move into administrative work. While common, overreliance on overloads and adjuncts is not a sustainable strategy.
- Reassess administrative assignments regularly to ensure that institutional need does not become a permanent individual burden.
- Align institutional reliance on faculty leadership with meaningful compensation, recognition, and career mobility.
In short, moving faculty members into administration takes forethought, planning, and a vision for what academic affairs could look like in the near future. The institutional challenge is to establish stability, trust, and ensure that leadership does not come at the expense of long-term academic vitality or individual career sustainability. While institutions may be able to absorb some volatility associated with change leadership, it is critical to make decisions with the best interest of our students and the individuals that support them in and beyond the classroom.
