Faculty Shortage: 32% at IITs, 22% at IIMs

Private engineering colleges across the country are about 30% short of faculty, but premier national institutes aren't in a better place. The average faculty shortage in IITs is 32%, while it is 31% in IIITs, 22% at IIMs and 25% in NITs.

Only six out of the 16 IITs have met the guideline of a 10:1 student to faculty ratio. All six are among the eight IITs that were founded in 2008. IIT Hyderabad and Jodhpur are the other two, which have a student-faculty ratio of 16:1 and 17:1 respectively. The other eight older IITs face an average faculty shortage of 41%, according to a reply to a question raised in Lok Sabha last week.

In 2008, the Union Ministry for Human Resource and Development announced eight new IITs under the Institutes of Technology Act (amended), 2011.

In July 2014, the Centre announced five new IITs in Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Chattisgarh and Goa.

Too few to teach: Average faculty shortage across national institutes

In the Union budget presented on Saturday, one new IIT has been proposed for Karnataka, and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, has been proposed for conversion to an IIT.

"The Union government should stop announcing new IITs. With existing IITs facing acute shortage of faculty, finding quality teachers for the new institutions will be hard," said D P Kothari, former director of IIT-Delhi.

Kothari said stringent rules for promotion and lack of incentives stop many from applying for the positions. "Publishing research papers, writing books, managing academia and other related activities are the standards for a good faculty. But, the rules for promotion in IITs and NITs are so stringent that most teachers change jobs," said Kothari. "Fearing the rules, most freshers do not apply."

Bhaskar Ramammurthi, director of IIT-Madras, said the expansion of established IITs in 2008-10 led to faculty shortage. "The established IITs expanded at almost 50% of their strength. Thus, we fell short of faculty," Ramamurthi said, "But, all IITs have been recruiting faculty every year, and nearly 30 new faculty join each institution. If an average of 10 faculty retire, we still get 20 new teachers." He indicated that it might take another five years for all IITs to meet the student-faculty ratio guideline.