Higher education professional development trends are increasingly focusing on areas such as quality improvement, quality assurance, and optimal technology delivery models in order to achieve academic excellence. Universities around the world rely on their faculty professional development centers to provide a variety of professional development programmes to support teaching, research, and student learning.

Faculty of professional development in European higher education provides some significant insights for audiences all over the world. Despite the fact that European higher education leaders have recognized that promoting student-centered teaching and improving teaching quality are critical for the future, and that certain countries, such as Belgium, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, have taken proactive steps to support high-quality, student-centered instruction, most European countries continue to rely on a more traditional approach.

Most European countries regard teaching assessments as a tool of quality control. The Bologna Process, Erasmus Programme, and, more recently, the Erasmus+ Programme have all contributed to the development of an integrated and regionalized higher education system across Europe and other participating countries, which necessitates equivalent high-quality classroom instruction in order to permit significant student mobility.

However, despite the continuing structural convergence under the Bologna Process, higher education systems in Europe can still vary greatly throughout the continent. In general, different European countries in different regions place differing emphasis on professional development, student-centered policies, and focusing on employability skills.

In general, the term "quality" may be addressed with greater nuance in the European setting of higher education than in other parts of the world.