New Delhi: The recruiter was supposed to be judging the students, but on that specific day, he had his eyes on the professor.
Prof Sujoy Chakravarty, 35, would make a prize catch for an investment bank. With a PhD in economics from Purdue University in Indiana in eastern US and years of teaching experience at the University of Texas and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Ahmedabad, Chakravarty could easily negotiate a fat salary for himself at places such as Morgan Stanley or JPMorgan Chase, spending his days analysing balance sheets and making investments.
Instead, he wanted to teach, Chakravarty told the recruiter. In fact, the life of an educator—intellectual pursuits, fixed working hours, months of vacation—appealed to him so much that he wasn’t tempted by a salary many, many times what he was making as a college professor.
But Chakravarty is a dying breed. As salaries for professors stagnate and funding for research evaporate, colleges across the nation have seen their ranks of teachers diminish. Positions remain vacant, with advertisements yielding a few dismal candidates. Students are taught by professors close to their retirement age, by postgraduate students or not at all. In the 1,475 colleges that teach engineering and technology across all the states, over 40,000 teachers are needed, according to a 2006 study by the All India Council of Technical Education.
“What we need are the front-runners, great teachers who are able to do research,” says D.K. Pandya, the head of department for Physics at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, who for two years worked on a faculty forum focused on recruitment. “But often, the best people don’t even apply.”
But what is more alarming is this statistic: by 2011—just four years from now—that
shortage of teachers will swell to 2,31,000. Almost 90% of this shortage is in areas that have driven India’s recent growth: computer science, information technology and electrical engineering, according to the study, which was written by a committee chaired by P. Rama Rao, a professor in Hyderabad who has been warning about this impending crisis.
At IIT Delhi, one of the most elite universities in India, at least 133 positions remain vacant, out of a total sanctioned faculty strength of 583, according to an official in the registrar’s office, who asked not to be named as he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. “We get some response when we place an advertisement,” he said. “But of course, salaries are a huge issue.”