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Deepak Mehta's association with Delhi University, dating back to the early 1990s, is about to end in a few months. The highly respected sociologist is about to join, what he calls, "a sanctuary for social sciences". He is one of several professors who have quit or are about to leave government institutions to join upcoming private universities.
The prospect of better pay attracts some. For others, the working environment is the reason. Mehta finds the Noida-based Shiv Nadar University's focus on "research and innovation" tempting. "Places like Shiv Nadar University give scope for critical thought to emerge. The research output from the university in the few years of its existence has been impressive," Mehta explains.
The migration of faculty members has left a hole in several institutions of excellence. The Union human resource development (HRD) ministry recently informed Parliament that the 16 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have a faculty shortage of 36.5 per cent. The 30 National Institutes of Technology face a faculty shortage in the range of 41 per cent.
The shortage is not confined to centres of excellence alone. Consultancy firm Ernst & Young estimates state varsities face a faculty shortage of 40 per cent and central ones nearly 35 per cent. "While student enrolments have gone up by over 100 times between 1950-51 and 2011-12, the number of teachers has gone up by less than 40 times, which implies the student-teacher ratios have declined by about 2.5 times in this period," says a report prepared by Deloitte and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Much of the current shortage could be attributed to a massive growth in the higher education sector in the past seven years. In 2006-07, the country had 387 universities. The number stood at 700 in 2012-13. In terms of number of colleges, the growth has been phenomenal, from 21,170 in 2006-07 to 33,023 in 2011-12. The bulk of the growth has been in the private sector. There has been an increase of more than 60 per cent in the number of private higher education institutions in the past five years. They account for nearly 64 per cent of all student enrolments, up from nearly 50 per cent a decade ago.
"It is not the number of private colleges that have come up that matters. It is their quality and basic institutional motivation and vision that is crucial. Some of the world's greatest universities are private (Harvard, Stanford, etc). Creating and maintaining quality in higher education institutions is a complex and challenging task - but it is unavoidable if India is to emerge as a modern nation," says Chiranjib Sen, professor at Azim Premji University. He was also a member of the task force on Faculty Shortage and Design of Performance Appraisal Systems constituted by the HRD ministry in 2011.
The student-teacher ratio, which stood at 14.2 in 1980-81, has gone up to nearly 30. To bring the ratio to a reasonable 20, the National Skill Development Corporation had estimated there would be an incremental requirement of about 31,71,000 teachers in higher education between 2008 and 2022.
The question is how to go about it? Better remuneration is one way to attract people to the teaching profession. Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business has done that. It reportedly pays 4-5 times the average salary paid at other business schools in the country. It has also reduced the average teaching hours a year to 120 as opposed to 200 hours in other business schools.
Sen's suggestion is that "there are long-term structural issues that need to be resolved on both the supply and demand side for faculty. On the supply side, we need to signal to bright young professionals that academics is a rewarding profession. Both financial and moral incentives are required. In my view, the latter are more important." Sen was a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, before switching over to Azim Premji University recently.
CII director-general Chandrajit Banerjee's prescription is: encourage students to take up research by providing handsome scholarships and then utilise part of their time for teaching. "Giving freedom to institutes to offer competitive packages to attract good talent from outside can be another way of addressing the faculty crunch," he adds.
