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Faculty of the Indian Institutes of Technology Stages a Hunger Strike to Demand Higher Pay as Schools Face Staffing Shortage
By GEETA ANAND and KRISHNA POKHAREL
The pay for teachers, combined with complaints over the government's strict new hiring and promotion guidelines for faculty, have caused sufficient frustration that the faculty at the institutions -- known as some of the most competitive educational establishments in the world -- are protesting openly.
The 1,500 faculty members of the 15 IITs nationwide went without food for a day last week. They are threatening more hunger strikes if the government doesn't meet their demands. The two sides are scheduled to meet Friday to seek a compromise.
"It's mad, absolutely mad, to think we can compete with industry in a booming India with salaries so low and regulations limiting our flexibility," says Sanjoy Ghosh, secretary of the faculty union and an assistant professor of biochemical engineering at the IIT in Roorkee, a town about 105 miles north of Delhi.
As much as 25% of faculty seats remain unfilled systemwide, according to M. Balakrishnan, deputy director of faculty and professor of computer science at IIT in New Delhi. Many alumni worry that the result is a loss of luster for the institutes.
"There is no way we can be a premier educational institution in the world if we can't keep recruiting the best brains," says Rahul Jain, an IIT graduate employed as a director of operations of Shapoorji Pallonji & Co., a large Mumbai construction firm.
M. Thenmozhi, president of the All India IIT Faculty Federation and a professor of management studies at the IIT in Chennai, southern India, says IIT professors aren't seeking U.S. salaries, but a pay scale that is "domestically competitive" in India's booming economy where private-sector pay has soared.
Starting professors earn salaries of $6,000 a year, rising to $15,000 for the most qualified, which is "not sufficient to attract high-quality, young faculty members," she said. The professors are demanding an increase in the minimum entry-level pay to about $9,000 annually, and a 1% to 2% overall increase in compensation for associate professor and professors.
The unrest in academia reflects a broader gripe with an education system that is both chronically underfunded and highly regulated. With only a few exceptions, Indian universities can't pay higher salaries, increase tuition, change curriculum or increase enrollment without appealing to the labyrinthine government bureaucracy. These hurdles have existed for years, but it is rare for the IITs, the only Indian schools that consistently rank among the top universities in the world, to agitate.
The Indian government's annual expenditures for IITs, at $192 million, for example, make up only 8% of the $2.4 billion operating budget of the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., which enrolls one-third of the 32,000 IIT students, according to the government and university Web sites. Yet the government, while opening India's economy in the past decade, has kept control of regulations on education and prevents the flexibility many institutions say they need to raise tuition, pay teachers more and provide a better education to students.
[IMGa=left]http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BA920_IIT_G_20091001191206.jpg[/IMGa]
While IIT students are almost guaranteed prominent positions in the Indian work force -- many Indian CEOs are graduates -- India overall is struggling to produce enough employable graduates to meet its economic growth, which has reached 9% in recent years and is projected at 6% even during the global recession.
Kapil Sibal, minister of Human Resource Development, which oversees education, has promised to ease regulations to promote the improvement and expansion of higher education. He said he wants to allow foreign universities to set up stand-alone universities free of most local regulations.
But the struggles of IIT show the uphill battle he faces. The faculty at IIT is the highest paid and most loosely regulated in the Indian government university system. The fact that this system can't fill teaching positions because of the low starting salaries for faculty set by the government reflects the depth of the problems. (IIT faculty are permitted to do outside consulting work to boost their pay, but only about 15% do so.)
In an interview, Mr. Sibal says he would like to pay higher salaries but his hands are tied.
"I can't say the Indian government is going to pay Harvard salaries to one group of professors. The other universities will say, 'What's wrong with us?' They will all be having hunger strikes tomorrow," he said.
India, with a deficit of $84 billion -- or 6.8% of the gross domestic product -- can't afford to substantially raise the salaries of the thousands of professors in the nation's colleges, he said. The government has taken austerity measures, he noted, such as ministers like himself traveling coach on airplanes.
Aditya Bhoi, a post-graduate student of civil engineering at IIT in Delhi, said he wouldn't consider a teaching career there at the current pay scale. "The issue of autonomy and better salary also concern the quality of education we get here," he added.
India's Ivy League Protests Lack of Public Funding - WSJ.com
By GEETA ANAND and KRISHNA POKHAREL
The pay for teachers, combined with complaints over the government's strict new hiring and promotion guidelines for faculty, have caused sufficient frustration that the faculty at the institutions -- known as some of the most competitive educational establishments in the world -- are protesting openly.
The 1,500 faculty members of the 15 IITs nationwide went without food for a day last week. They are threatening more hunger strikes if the government doesn't meet their demands. The two sides are scheduled to meet Friday to seek a compromise.
"It's mad, absolutely mad, to think we can compete with industry in a booming India with salaries so low and regulations limiting our flexibility," says Sanjoy Ghosh, secretary of the faculty union and an assistant professor of biochemical engineering at the IIT in Roorkee, a town about 105 miles north of Delhi.
As much as 25% of faculty seats remain unfilled systemwide, according to M. Balakrishnan, deputy director of faculty and professor of computer science at IIT in New Delhi. Many alumni worry that the result is a loss of luster for the institutes.
"There is no way we can be a premier educational institution in the world if we can't keep recruiting the best brains," says Rahul Jain, an IIT graduate employed as a director of operations of Shapoorji Pallonji & Co., a large Mumbai construction firm.
M. Thenmozhi, president of the All India IIT Faculty Federation and a professor of management studies at the IIT in Chennai, southern India, says IIT professors aren't seeking U.S. salaries, but a pay scale that is "domestically competitive" in India's booming economy where private-sector pay has soared.
Starting professors earn salaries of $6,000 a year, rising to $15,000 for the most qualified, which is "not sufficient to attract high-quality, young faculty members," she said. The professors are demanding an increase in the minimum entry-level pay to about $9,000 annually, and a 1% to 2% overall increase in compensation for associate professor and professors.
The unrest in academia reflects a broader gripe with an education system that is both chronically underfunded and highly regulated. With only a few exceptions, Indian universities can't pay higher salaries, increase tuition, change curriculum or increase enrollment without appealing to the labyrinthine government bureaucracy. These hurdles have existed for years, but it is rare for the IITs, the only Indian schools that consistently rank among the top universities in the world, to agitate.
The Indian government's annual expenditures for IITs, at $192 million, for example, make up only 8% of the $2.4 billion operating budget of the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., which enrolls one-third of the 32,000 IIT students, according to the government and university Web sites. Yet the government, while opening India's economy in the past decade, has kept control of regulations on education and prevents the flexibility many institutions say they need to raise tuition, pay teachers more and provide a better education to students.
[IMGa=left]http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BA920_IIT_G_20091001191206.jpg[/IMGa]
While IIT students are almost guaranteed prominent positions in the Indian work force -- many Indian CEOs are graduates -- India overall is struggling to produce enough employable graduates to meet its economic growth, which has reached 9% in recent years and is projected at 6% even during the global recession.
Kapil Sibal, minister of Human Resource Development, which oversees education, has promised to ease regulations to promote the improvement and expansion of higher education. He said he wants to allow foreign universities to set up stand-alone universities free of most local regulations.
But the struggles of IIT show the uphill battle he faces. The faculty at IIT is the highest paid and most loosely regulated in the Indian government university system. The fact that this system can't fill teaching positions because of the low starting salaries for faculty set by the government reflects the depth of the problems. (IIT faculty are permitted to do outside consulting work to boost their pay, but only about 15% do so.)
In an interview, Mr. Sibal says he would like to pay higher salaries but his hands are tied.
"I can't say the Indian government is going to pay Harvard salaries to one group of professors. The other universities will say, 'What's wrong with us?' They will all be having hunger strikes tomorrow," he said.
India, with a deficit of $84 billion -- or 6.8% of the gross domestic product -- can't afford to substantially raise the salaries of the thousands of professors in the nation's colleges, he said. The government has taken austerity measures, he noted, such as ministers like himself traveling coach on airplanes.
Aditya Bhoi, a post-graduate student of civil engineering at IIT in Delhi, said he wouldn't consider a teaching career there at the current pay scale. "The issue of autonomy and better salary also concern the quality of education we get here," he added.
India's Ivy League Protests Lack of Public Funding - WSJ.com
