What ail Indian varsities? Underpaid ad-hocs, lack of young talent and more

These universities manage to barely do just about enough in terms of teaching by using large armies of ad hoc or part-time faculty

Two recent reports – one on faculty shortages in new central universities and the other on faculty shortages and the growing numbers of part-time faculty in older central universities – provide a glimpse into the broken state of India’s higher education.

While the new central universities that are being set up since the past decade or so – in Haryana, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar – are functioning with around 52% of the sanctioned faculty strength, even some of the older ones, such as Allahabad University and Delhi University, have vacancies of 64.44% and 47.7%,