MUMBAI|KOLKATA: Last month, when IIT Kanpur
opened its overseas office in New York - the first of
its kind across any IIT- fund-raising was one of the
drivers behind the move. The other was faculty
hiring.
Nearly 60% of the institute's faculty comes from
North America, and the NYC office will be involved
in reaching out to such potential candidates,
encouraging them to apply and help address their
concerns.
It shows just how seriously the Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs) are taking their hiring efforts.
From start-up grants that can go up to Rs 1 crore,
incentive schemes funded by donor money, special
young faculty awards and job scouting for spouses
to setting up faculty search committees and fast-
tracking the hiring process, the premier engineering
institutes are going all out to get the best and the
brightest on their rolls.
According to recent data, over 40% of the teaching
slots in the older IITs are lying vacant. Recruitments
have not kept pace with the huge expansion in the
number of seats because of the 27% OBC quota
implementation. The teacher-student ratio at most of
the older IITs averages 1:15, as compared to the
ideal 1:10 ratio.
However, reaching the optimal faculty numbers will
take between five and 10 years. Right now, quality is
critical to the IITs at Mumbai, Kanpur, Roorkee,
Delhi, Kharagpur, Chennai and Hyderabad. In the
meantime, they are tapping global networks, beefing
up infrastructure and focusing more on research to
attract and maintain a steady flow of good faculty.
In the past 10 months, IIT Kanpur has offered two to
three top-notch candidates start-up grants of as
much as Rs 1 crore, up from the usual Rs 25 lakh.
During this time, it has made offers to 50
candidates, of whom some 30 have joined. "We have
to think of ways to circumvent the fact that we have
pay scale constraints," says Indranil Manna,
director, IIT Kanpur.
IITs are focusing on research prospects, which
academics often give more importance to than
compensation. IIT Roorkee, for instance, has
invested Rs 185 crore in research infrastructure in
the past two years to attract potential candidates. An
initial research grant of Rs 10 lakh is given to every
individual who joins, says IIT-R director Pradipta
Banerji. In the past few months, three faculty
members have submitted proposals worth Rs 3.5
crore, which they will get.
IIT Kharagpur is toeing a similar line. The institute
has increased the faculty start-up grant from Rs 5
lakh to Rs 28 lakh, which is now given within a
month compared with six to 12 months earlier. "We
are also giving total grants of Rs 14 crore for special
research that is competitive and collaborative. If we
see a huge interest in this, we will increase the
overall quantum of grants next year," says PP
Chakarabarti, director, IIT Kharagpur.
IIT Roorkee has created a global network of
researchers and foreign faculty members to give
leads on bright candidates willing to relocate and
work in India.
It has also formalised a network of faculty search
committees and fast-tracked the hiring process to
close it within a month, one-sixth the time it took
earlier. At IIT Delhi, faculty members routinely reach
out to potential hires while conducting overseas
seminars or conferences. Candidates are regularly
interviewed over Skype.
"Our Young Fellow Incentive Scheme, funded by
donor money, gives up to 50 fellows per year, an
additional Rs 1.2 lakh over and above their salary.
It's for candidates who do outstanding research or
bring something unique to the department," says
IIT-D director RK Shevgaonkar. IIT Bombay too has a
young faculty award to all assistant professors for
the first four years. The institute has steamlined and
decentralised the hiring process and departments are
quite active in faculty search, says director Devang
Khakhar.
At IIT Madras, director Bhaskar Ramamurthi says
they making it possible for new faculty members to
access a Rs 1 lakh grant for professional
development much earlier than they did before.
"These faculty need to attend international
conferences and be heard in their peer group. We
are trying to facilitate that," says Ramamurthi.
Institutes are also addressing housing concerns. IITs
like the ones at Chennai and Kanpur are focusing on
better housing on campus, growing vertically where
land is at a premium. They are also trying to create
opportunities for spouses both within the institute
as well as finding them jobs nearby. While some are
inducting spouses with PhDs as scientists, others are
placing them in administrative roles, automation
cells, hostels, computer centres and even schools.
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