Edu-leaders

Head out of Jaipur through Tonk Road, leaving behind the noise, bustle and colour of the Pink city and you come across a sprawling educational campus. The spanking new Jagan Nath University, set up in 2008, cuts a peaceful albeit incongruous picture in this rural setting. Yet, indoors, things are not as serene at this new institute, as a frazzled management committee attempts to find teachers to fill up vacant faculty posts.

“I won’t say there is just a drought in faculty.I would call it a virtual famine,” exclaims the university’s vice chancellor Professor M.S. Verma. He says that out of every 100 candidates who applied to teach at the new university, only two made the cut. “We needed to hire at least two dozen,” Verma grouses.
Finally, in order to fill up posts, the new university that offers courses in architecture, law, commerce, engineering, among others, had to come up with some innovative measures. For instance, a classroom session was simulated where students were also roped in to judge the potential candidates’ teaching ability. “We felt the best way to judge inexperienced candidates would be a live test,” says Verma. But, it’s the same lament all across India, whether in Delhi, other large metros or small mofussil towns, both in universities and in academic institutions promoted by private players.

Even acclaimed temples of learning like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), are griping about the acute faculty crunch. In five years time, the existing IITs in the country will need 3,000 teachers,points Shashi Gulhati, retired IIT Delhi professor, and former CEO of Educational Consultants India Ltd. (EdCIL), who authored a report “The IITs Slumping or Soaring.” In 2008, the seven IITs were facing a faculty shortfall of about 25 percent, he says. With 13 IITs, the situation is going to get worse, especially if you take into account the fact that hundreds of teachers will be retiring soon, and the new recruits barely match up.

“The trend is that people appointed for teaching jobs are not those who were at the top of their class,” notes Gulhati, himself an MIT alumnus, and one of the rare breed who chose to come back to teach in India. He rues that “people who graduated yesterday are teaching today.” Indeed, the state of affairs in the house of academia is so bad today that one professor privately admits: “The unteachable are being taught by the untaught.”

The Missing Teachers
Setting aside the quality issue, a look at the numbers reveals that there are just not enough candidates applying for teaching jobs. A 2008 report, issued by the pay-review committee of the University Grants Commission (UGC), India’s university regulator, estimated that about 50 percent of positions at central and state-financed universities could be vacant.

Anand Sudarshan, managing director and CEO of Manipal Education, fears that this situation will become much worse with the recent capacity addition moves made by the government. In a drastic bid to correct the Gross Enrolment Ratio(GER) of the country, the government has recently announced the launch of 80 new universities, engineering schools, management schools, and research institutes, along with more than 350 undergraduate colleges. With the increase in GER, the need for teachers will increase.