Why Have Continuing Education and Professional Development Become Important Indicators of University Quality?

A university can possess excellent facilities and distinguished researchers while still struggling to update teaching, support adult learners or translate new knowledge into professional practice. Continuing education and professional development matter because they reveal whether an institution can renew its capabilities rather than simply preserve its reputation.

For university leaders, the relationship between continuing education and university quality is therefore practical: learning opportunities become meaningful evidence when they produce demonstrable improvements. Course volume, training expenditure and certificates alone cannot establish that an institution delivers a better educational experience.

What these activities reveal about institutional quality

Continuing education usually describes learning beyond an initial qualification, including professional updating and structured opportunities for adults returning to study. Continuing professional development, or CPD, focuses on maintaining and extending professional capability. Within universities, this includes academic staff, professional services teams and institutional leaders.

These activities overlap, but their quality questions differ. An external continuing education programme must demonstrate relevance, accessible provision and credible assessment. An internal staff development programme must show whether colleagues can apply what they learn. Both require clear objectives and review processes.

The European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, particularly standards 1.5 and 1.6, connect quality with staff competence, opportunities for professional development and capable student support services. This provides an explicit quality assurance rationale for investment, not merely a promotional argument.

Four mechanisms that connect development with quality

1. Teaching remains responsive to learners

Subject expertise does not automatically provide expertise in assessment design, inclusive teaching or digital accessibility. Well-designed development helps educators examine how students learn, test different approaches and improve their courses. The relevant evidence is a better-designed learning experience, supported by student work and professional review.

2. Support services become more effective

Students encounter institutional quality through admissions, libraries, disability support, technical services and academic advice. Development for these teams can address inconsistent information, inaccessible processes and weak referrals. A university that develops only its lecturers overlooks much of the learner experience.

3. External provision stays relevant

Continuing education creates opportunities to discuss changing needs with employers, professional bodies, alumni and communities. These conversations can inform curriculum review, but consultation is only the beginning. Universities should document how feedback changes learning outcomes, assessment tasks or delivery arrangements.

4. Improvement becomes an institutional habit

A functioning development system turns recurring problems into learning priorities. Instead of responding to every difficulty with another isolated workshop, leaders can connect staff learning with programme review and resource decisions. This makes improvement less dependent on individual enthusiasm.

Move from activity counts to credible evidence

A useful evidence chain begins with an identified need and follows it through learning, application and review. Each link should be visible. If an institution cannot explain the problem a programme addresses, it will struggle to judge whether that programme was worthwhile.

• Need: What learner or service problem prompted the investment?
• Capability: What should participants be able to do afterwards?
• Application: What changed in a course, assessment or service?
• Experience: What did students or other beneficiaries encounter differently?
• Review: What will the university retain, revise or stop?

Consider an illustrative engineering faculty where students misunderstand project feedback. Lecturers undertake development on feedback design, revise their rubrics and introduce opportunities for students to use comments before final submission. Reviewers compare task designs and samples of student work, while students explain whether expectations became clearer. This is a stronger quality argument than a list of workshop attendees.

The OECD guide Fostering Quality Teaching in Higher Education recommends connecting professional development to institutional educational goals and monitoring its impact on teaching quality. Its practical message remains useful: support and evaluation should form part of the same design.

Quality assurance is not the same as ranking performance

Leaders should distinguish three concepts. Quality improvement concerns better educational practice. Accreditation or external quality assurance considers provision against relevant standards. Rankings compare institutions through a specified methodology. Evidence valuable for one purpose does not automatically satisfy the others.

For example, the published QS World University Rankings methodology identifies indicators including academic reputation, citations per faculty and faculty–student ratio. Staff CPD participation is not itself a listed indicator in that framework. Development may support institutional capabilities indirectly, but this is not a direct ranking score or a predictable route to a higher position.

EUCPD membership does not affect ranking eligibility or scores. Keep membership, training attendance and accreditation distinct from the evidence required by a named ranking methodology.

What governing bodies should ask

Boards and academic councils need a concise account of priorities, access and results. Ask whether development reaches part-time staff and professional services teams, whether protected time is available, and whether academic departments can show applied changes. Examine gaps as carefully as successes.

Costs should include staff time, delivery support and evaluation, not only course fees. Equally, avoid judging every programme by immediate financial return. Some learning protects assessment integrity, improves accessibility or strengthens institutional resilience. Its value must be assessed against its stated purpose.

Frequently asked questions

Does more CPD automatically mean higher quality?

No. Relevant learning, opportunities to apply it and evidence of improvement matter more than accumulated hours. High participation can coexist with little change in practice.

Should every development activity affect student results?

No. Some activities address governance, safety or service reliability. Select outcomes that match the activity rather than attributing all institutional results to staff training.

A useful next step

Select one institutional quality priority and trace its development evidence from identified need to observed change. Where the chain breaks, improve programme design, implementation support or evaluation. That disciplined review makes continuing education an evidence-based component of university quality rather than an unsupported claim.