In a move aimed at addressing faculty shortage, the Ministry of Human Resource Development is in plans to relax the norms for mobility of faculty at the Indian Institutes of technology (IITs). The premier technical institutes are finding it tough to deal with the staff crunch and have resorted to measures ranging from roping in retired professors to short-term migration of teachers between IITs.
The move by MHRD is expected to help the IITs touch a 10:1 ratio of students to faculty. According to the latest MHRD numbers, IITs are falling short of faculty by 37 per cent. The new norms will allow faculty to migrate in the long term, 10 years, from an old IIT to a new one or vice versa.
Faculty can currently move between IITs only on short term deputation. MHRD is also nudging the department of expenditure to revise the funds allocated to the new IITs for building infrastructure, the official adds. This move will further ensure that the faculties find an equally competitive research environment at new IITs as is currently available at the older IITs.
IIT Hyderabad with barely 140 regular faculty members for around 1,700 students, has invested in building a strong infrastructure for research and development. IIT Kanpur, on the other hand, has recently introduced video conferencing for faculty selection. The ratio of teacher to students at IIT Kanpur is at 1:17. It has around 10 to 12 visiting faculty of which many are retired faculty members.
