EDUCATION SPECIAL.....................Wanted: Faculty that Fits the Bill at IITs 

Wanted: Faculty that Fits the Bill at IITs





There's no dearth of applicants, but institutes fall short of competent candidates by up to 40%; they are now beefing up research opportunities, compensation packages

With the undergraduate class of 2019 set to enter India's premier technology institutes in a month's time, here is a shocker. Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are facing a faculty shortage of 30-40%. There is no dearth of people interested in the job, but often these candidates don't match the requirements of the top tech schools.

At IIT Kharagpur, the shortage based on the ideal ratio of one faculty member for every 10 students is more than 40%.

It needs 435 more faculty members for the existing student base of over 10,000.IIT-Bombay, which currently has 687 faculty members including part-timers, has a shortage of 213. Other IITs fare no better.

The problem lies in the availability of quality faculty members, said Kushal Sen, dean faculty at IIT Delhi. The IIT is usually flooded with hundreds of applications at any given time.

“Only three to five of the hundreds of applications that we receive are worth selecting,“ said Sen. IIT Delhi hires around 30 faculty members every year. It tries to attract talent by doling out research grants . 10 lakh for . 1 lakh for peripheral and ` of ` equipment. It currently has 523 faculty members for 7,800 students.

Fearing it will lose competent faculty to competition, IIT Kanpur recently closed a hiring in less than two weeks compared with the usual three to six weeks.

“It was a question of losing out this professor to competition had we prolonged, hence we had to quickly close this with an offer letter,“ explained Manindra Agarwal, IIT-Kanpur's dean for faculty affairs. Other IITs are also working round the clock in getting good faculty talent as well as promptly closing the hiring.

Most of the IITs are looking overseas to meet the demand for faculty.

Of the new faculty hired in the past five years, around half are foreigners at IITBombay. IITs in Delhi, Guwahati, Gandhinagar and Kanpur are all trying to grab the best from overseas.

IIT-Kanpur has an office in New York while at other IITs, representatives are sent overseas to scout for faculty.

According to Vineet Nayar, founder of Sampark Foundation and former CEO at HCL Technologies, inadequate research opportunities are keeping many competent people away from joining IITs are faculty members. “Unfortunately as a nation we have lost our charm for teaching as a profession Research is great but only in patches at the IITs in India. Corporate interest and funding both are low in research. Demand for these researchers in the corporate world is low and thus for a high potentia faculty, it is unattractive to work in such an environment,“ Nayar said.

For newer IITs, attrition is a major prob lem. Until recently, faculty members were leaving ev ery two to three months at IIT-Guwahati, said Pina keswar Mahanta, head of mechanical engineering.

Most of the leading IITs are busy working around making the compensation packages more attractive In the form of chair pro fessorship or research grants, IITs are trying their best to lure teaching talent with bet ter packages. For instance, starting this year, IIT Madras is initiating `Institute Chair Professorship' wherein the chosen faculty will get additional compensation . 25,000 per month apart from space and of ` funding for research.

Using donations largely from the alum ni community , IIT Kanpur also offers a top-up salary of ` . 25,000 or even more to monthly compensation. Sensing that research is a big draw for competent faculty , IIT Madras is adding two research centres every year. “We have initiated a ramp-up research centre which would help us to attract and retain faculty ,“ said R David Koilpillai, dean (Planning).

Subramanian Ramadorai, chairman of the National Skill Development Corporation and National Skill Development Agency as well as former vice chairman at Tata Consultancy Services, said: “The current faculty at the IITs is world-class but surely they face a severe shortage.They (IITs) have to be bold enough to address this challenge by sprucing up research activities.“

IIT Kanpur has total faculty of 407 for 6,477 students, a ratio of 1:16. It is aiming to reach 450 faculty members next year, but that will still fall short of the ideal ratio of 1:10. At IIT Kharagpur, the existing faculty strength is a little over 625, while the sanctioned strength is 1,060.

“Retaining good faculty is proving a bigger hurdle than hiring faculty as we are facing a huge problem due to lack of space (office, laboratory , hostel, etc.) and infrastructure,“ IIT Kanpur director Indranil Manna said.

Last year, IIT Bombay conducted two cycles of interviews for faculty. “We will continue to do so,“ said director Devang Khakhar.

Prachi Verma

ET 12JUN15