Faculty crunch hits IITs, hundreds of positions vacant

The premiere Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are struggling with a severe faculty crunch with hundreds of positions lying vacant. IIT-Kharagpur leads the rest with 299 vacancies, followed by IIT-Bombay with 222. IIT- Roorkee is short of 194 teachers, IIT Madras by 138 and IIT-Delhi by 178. Other IITs are not much behind in this respect.

IIT-Kanpur has 69 vacancies, IIT-Guwahati 65 and IIT-Ropad 48.

The picture is depressingly similar across all the 15 IITs in the country.

According to observers the shortage of trained faculty at the premier institutes bares the hollowness of claims about the rising standards of higher education in the country.

They add that though the institutes have a poor teacher student ratio at 1:15 as against the top ranking institutes elsewhere like Harvard with a 1:7 ratio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Hong Kong and University of Michigan at 1:6, IITs can improve it to 1:10 but this seems to be a far cry at present considering the 34.2 per cent vacant positions.

In the event of the higher education market opening up for international institutes the situation will only worsen with foreign players picking up teachers from these IITs they say.

To avert an exodus situation, the HRD ministry has already promised sops to IIT faculty members which would include a performance-related incentive scheme but the issue of existing vacancies remains unaddressed.