Faculty and teachers lay the foundation for building future leaders. Their commitment and dedication can involve more than academics: providing emotional support to students, helping them with planning, and continuous learning. While they are available to support students and the management at all times, this constant responsibility can lead to their burnout too! In this article, we identify the reasons that could be causing faculty burnout and the ways institutions can address this.

A study conducted by NCERT in 2024 with 71,635 teachers shows that, although the teachers were proud of what they were building, they are often stressed with student behaviour and admin work.

In another survey by QS I-GAUGE of 5,792 faculty, 13% of them experienced ‘burnout’ often, and 53% ‘sometimes’.

Factors that contribute to burnout –

1. Administrative work. A study in Karnataka in 2025 showed that 33% of teachers experienced burnout because of clerical work, strict compliance policies, preparing reports, and helping with accreditations. Although digitisation has reduced paperwork, it has not completely eliminated the work overload. The new-age demands include data entry across multiple platforms, Syncing books of different grades, addressing redundant mails, and digital documentation. It is seen that teachers spend about 10 hours every week on non-academic work.

2. Student-related stress. Student-related stress. This is one of the major stress contributors. Managing the disruptive behavior of students, their emotional demands, indiscipline, short attention spans, social-media-influenced emotional outbursts, and large-sized classrooms, coupled with pressure to cater to high academic expectations, are some of the reasons. There is also an additional pressure from the parents demanding results and other such dynamics. An NCERT survey showed student behaviour as the top stressor for teachers and faculty.

3. Tech-related challenges. ‘Technostress’ is a new-age term that is caused by constant digital demands. It is seen that teachers average about 19 hours a week on smartphones for lesson preparation, coursework updation for parents’ reference, as part of management policies, and other admin work. Further, digital tools used for learning management systems need continuous training due to updates and the risk of burnout due to usability issues.

4. Management pressures. Surveys show explicit and implicit demands from management for performance metrics, including enrollment drives, accreditation, strict compliance to institution policies, and non-teaching tasks that can fuel burnout.

Due to a constant juggle between tasks beyond teaching, teachers can face a poor work-life balance. Long hours at work and a necessity to continuously stay connected can lead to emotional fatigue, anxiety, depression, reduced quality of instruction, reduced morale, and complete burnout.

Generally, student and teen burnout during their school and college days is the focus of the majority of the studies and research. Experts rarely discuss the stress, burnout, and challenges faced by the teaching staff. It is high time that institutions and policymakers emphasise this segment enough, too.

What reforms can be brought about to tackle this challenge?

a. Teaching staff should be strictly freed from non-teaching tasks. When the admin work is assigned to dedicated support staff, teachers can focus more on the quality of the coursework and teaching itself. This can save up to 10 hours a week, which teachers can productively use to enhance their teaching.

b. Teaching staff should be given more autonomy to decide on the lesson plan, manage classrooms, and provide the required support to students. To boost teachers' confidence and creativity, management should not micromanage their work. Also, there should be defined work hours for teachers, limiting the response to calls, emails, and after-hours communication to respect their personal time and help them improve their work-life balance.

c. Mental health support for teachers is as important as it is for students. Institutions should provide the necessary counselors to help teachers share their concerns and reduce stress levels. d. Schools and colleges should adopt systems and digital tools that are user-friendly and simple in nature. Institutions should provide proper training for using the tools and quick support for any concerns.

e. Other strategies, like reducing the student-teacher ratio, can make teaching more manageable and reduce the stress of handling an overcrowded classroom. Policies like one day to relax and unburden them from the overload by means of giving them a few hours' break without classes to plan and regroup their thoughts can help prevent burnout.

f. Institutions should hold regular review meetings with their teaching staff to understand their challenges and concerns, compare schools and colleges that are better at retaining their teachers, implement the best strategies by means of rewarding them, and offload work to reduce their work pressure and stress.

In essence, addressing the issue of faculty burnout is not an option in 2026. Supporting teachers with necessary policies and systems not only increases their efficiency but also enhances the learning outcomes, ensuring a robust education system for the future.