RTI Report: 35% Shortfall of Teachers in 23 IITs

As per an RTI revelation, around 35% posts of teachers in different positions are lying vacant in 23 IITs of the country. The report has thus questioned the government initiatives to set up more IITs in the country so as to boost the higher education sector of the country.

Neemuch-based RTI activist Chandrashekhar Gaud, who filed the query, said that there are 7,744 teaching posts in all the 23 IITs of the country. But at present 5,072 teachers are on roll and are teaching 82,603 students. A total of 2,672 teaching posts are lying vacant in these IITs and this constitutes around 35 percent. As a result, the present teacher's students ratio stands at 1:16 whereas the IITs are trying to keep it in the 10:1 ratio.

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Reacting to these revelations, Anand Kumar, the founder of Super 30, said that in the last couple of years, the government has opened new IITs hurriedly but failed to provide required infrastructure like laboratories, classroom etc. As a result, it has affected the quality of these IITs and in the long run, it could affect the reputation and brand of IITs at the international level.

Gaud further said that not only the new IITs are affected by the shortage of teachers, even old IITs are also facing the same problem. Old IITs that have vacant posts of teachers are - IIT Bombay (30 percent), IIT Guwahati (27 percent), IIT Delhi (35 percent), IIT Kanpur (37 percent), IIT Madras (28 percent), IIT Kharagpur (46 percent), IIT BHU (47 percent) and IIT Roorkee (45 percent).

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The total number of teachers required in these eight IITs are 6250, but right now 3935 teachers are serving there, which is 37 percent short than the sanctioned posts.