As the higher education community is telling everyone in the society, there is a need for employees to continually be re-educated. The need is no different within the higher education institutions. We need a focus on development activities that involve the entire range of faculty roles.
Flexibility is one of the keys.
There needs to be a flexible incentive system of grants, travel funding, merit pay, matching offers, space, facilities, and time, to give faculty alternative ways to meet their development needs. That is, we need standard policies for dealing with faculty needs in a flexible way. Some leave for better professional opportunities elsewhere, for instance. Can we survey dept. We tried to collect information about this, but there is no central body of information, even on many specific topics, such as sabbatical leave policies at comparable research universities, or parental leave policies.