Vacancies ranging from 5 to 36% in faculty positions in 7 IITs: CAG report

NEW DELHI: Despite efforts put in by the IITs and a steady increase in the number of faculty members recruited every year, vacancies ranging from five to 36 per cent in faculty positions were observed in seven IITs, inhibiting a speedy expansion of student intake, according to a CAG report.

The report is on "Performance Audit of Setting up of new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)" for the 2014-2019 period. The eight institutes covered in the audit were IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Indore, IIT Jodhpur, IIT Mandi, IIT Patna and IIT Ropar. "In PG and PhD programmes, vacancies were observed across all eight IITs, indicating a need for a realistic assessment of the student intake as well as evaluation of these programmes with an objective of attracting required suitable students," the report said.

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"MoE permitted increase in sanction of faculty positions linked with the increase in students, meaning sanction of faculty posts to be increased by one for every increase of students by 10 (1:10 ratio). "Despite the efforts put in by the IITs and increase in faculty recruitment from year-to-year, vacancies ranging from 5 to 36 per cent in faculty positions were observed in seven IITs. This inhibited speedy expansion of student intake. In the long run, the vacancies will have an impact on the quality of education as vacancies increase the workload on existing faculty in these premier institutions," it added.

The audit panel recommended that the IITs may periodically review the availability of faculty members and the means of attracting suitable candidates to fill the vacancies. It noted that there was a shortfall in enrolment in the post-graduate (PG) programmes in all the eight IITs.

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"Five IITs did not fix an intake for the PhD courses, while the rest had shortfalls in admissions in these courses. IITs had vacancies in faculty positions, which would adversely affect the ability of IITs to provide quality education. Further, the representation of reserved categories in students' enrolment in most IITs was very low.

"It was also seen that all the IITs received very low levels of funding for research projects, sponsored from non-government sources. Thus, they remained dependent on the government for funding of their research activities. There was also a large variance between the patents filed and obtained by all the eight IITs and no patents were obtained during the five-year period, indicating that the research activities could not bring out fruitful results," the report said.