Indian Institutes hiring European Professors

Read it in yesterday’s TOI that India is looking forward to recruiting professors from foreign countries especially Europe. This step is mainly taken to overcome the scarcity of quality faculty in India. To attract such foreign talents, they have been offered really good pay packages & few of them have accepted the offers also.

Well, to begin with it’s a praiseworthy step and its great to know that now Europeans will come to our country for doing a job. Agreed that the quality of education will also improve if we will have better faculty. But have we ever wondered on the fact that why are we facing a scarcity of quality faculty in India? Is it really because Indian professors / teachers aren’t good and aren’t having the right talent or rather there is some elemental problem because of which there is a shortage of good faculty members in India?

Now, I personally don’t agree to the first scenario i.e., Indian Faculty lacks talent. Had it been true, they would not have been hired by the top most institutes of the world. In fact we all are aware that these days Indians are the deans & professors in some world renowned business schools & technical colleges. When Indians can make it up to such top institutes & colleges, then why are we facing this scarcity in our own country? Its not because Indians aren’t talented enough rather its because they aren’t being paid enough to survive in their own country. I know of many MBA Grads & Tech Grads who despite their interest in academic career don’t decide to enter into teaching profession because of the salary packages being offered in India. They compromise with their interest & take up some corporate job & if at all they decide to have a career in academics, they end up selecting some foreign institute where they are paid far better salaries.

To throw some light on the real scenario, I am quoting here some excerpt from Economic Times dated 21st Feb.’2006 :
A typical B-school in the US, the UK, France or Singapore offer salaries in the range of $80,000-1,20,000 a year depending on industry experience. In contrast, an IIM professor gets anywhere between $11,000-14,000 a year. “Even if we select a few candidates, there is no guarantee that they will ultimately join IIM-A. Our selection criteria matches the best institutes of the world. However, our salaries don’t,” says Professor Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM-A. His dilemma is not misplaced.

With this kind of package being offered in India, who would like to enter into teaching profession? In fact this scenario is not only for professional or premier colleges, rather in general colleges too, the professors are so underpaid & sometimes they don’t get salaries for months. Resultantly, they take private tuitions & take course to unfair means to earn their living which results in corruption & poorer quality of education in the classes.

If we can offer better packages to European or any other foreign faculty then why can’t we offer a better package to our Indian faculty? If the Indian talented faculty members are given enough financial motivation, then I am sure we will have many Indians who would not opt to settle abroad & then we need not look outside for good quality professors.

Which are the four most important communities for any country??? I think its Teachers, Police, Doctors & Defence Personnels. But the mockery is that unlike any other country, in India these are the lowest paid communities. No wonder, we are facing shortage of good & talented people in all these four communities in India.

Update: Would like to add one more excerpt here-
Economic Times dated 8th May'2006
Rs 34 lakh. Rs 4 lakh. Two figures, vastly diverse, yet closely connected. The first is the maximum salary that an IIM Ahmedabad graduate bagged this year. The second is the maximum salary drawn by an IIM-A professor under the government pay scale.

Of course I agree that these profs must be making money through consulting etc. But the point is that their salaries as profs are nowhere comparable to any corporate salary or decent salary level existing in India today.