IIT Kharagpur Severely Affected Due to Faculty Crunch

New Delhi: Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) going through a rough a phase due to faculty crunch, with IIT Kharagpur being the most affected among all. As per sources, teacher vacancies at the 15 IITs put together are almost 33 % against the sanctioned strength of 4,712, there are only 3,148 faculty members at present. The vacancies are around 29 % at the older IITs — Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee.

Besides, at the new ones, in Bhubaneswar, Patna, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Ropar, Jodhpur, Mandi and Indore, the figure is as high as 58 %. Moreover, the teacher-student ratio at the institutes where nearly 40,000 students are pursuing BTech and MTech courses is 1:13 against the norm of 1:10. The figure is 1:7.9 at Harvard University and 1:5.6 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which clearly indicates that teachers there can devote more time and resources to students.

Furthermore, most of IIT Kharagpur’s vacancies are in Information Technology and Mechanical Engineering, seen as growth drivers of the new-age economy. The teacher-student ratio here is 1:14, alarming for an institute with 7,550 students. According to a senior faculty member at IIT Delhi as there are not enough teachers, the existing group has to take extra load. They are devoting more time to teaching as a result of which research remains neglected.

The number of research publications has increased, with the seven older IITs having brought out 27,123 such papers in the past three years. But when it comes to getting patents to new technologies — a measure of the success of the new ideas highlighted in the publications — the track-record appears to be patchy: the seven IITs have been granted only 23 international patents for the technologies developed by them.

M.S. Ananth, IIT Madras Director whose institute is planning to put job ads in international journals, has said that the crunch has sparked an overseas hunt. He also added that the IIT Council has allowed recruitment of foreign faculty up to 10 per cent of the total strength (each institute). Their teachers are in touch with their friends in foreign universities to see if any of them want to join us.

Gautam Baruah, IIT Guwahati Director has offered some hope, saying many Persons of Indian Origin as well as foreign citizens had evinced interest. He also said that the only problem is that at present, foreign citizens are not allowed to take any permanent job in any public institution in India. The Citizenship Act says that only Indian citizen can take up permanent jobs in public institutions. This act will have to be amended also.

HRD ministry sources said they were consulting the home ministry to see if the amendments could be made. Surendra Prasad, the director of IIT Delhi, has said efforts to get more teachers were on. He added that their requirements are different. They are looking for quality people who have done good work in teaching and research. They are contacting such persons and asking them to join us. The results will be visible in a year or two.

Besides, some of the IITs have decided to send copies of job ads to Indian Embassies and High Commissions abroad. The Indian missions have been requested to facilitate the issue of visas to foreign teachers keen on IITs.