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India's Top Engineering Schools to Use
Faculty Quotas for Lower Classes
By
Shailaja Neelakantan
Issue
cover-dated June 28, 2008
New Delhi — Having won the battle to
increase student quotas at India’s public universities, the
government has now ordered the elite Indian Institutes of Technology
to introduce faculty quotas for members of the so-called lower
castes and classes, The Times of India reported today.
The order states that nearly half of
all faculty positions at the public institutes should be reserved
for members of those classes, effective immediately.
Even without quotas, the seven institutes already face faculty
shortages of 20 percent to 30 percent, a problem likely to be
exacerbated when six more institutes open this year. The order
states that the institutes may open faculty posts to members
of non-quota groups if the positions cannot be filled within
a year.
The newspaper reported that the institutes’
leaders are annoyed by the order, although none was willing
to be quoted by name. They feel that the high quality of the
institutes’ faculties will be compromised by the new policy.
“Some of the finest people have given
up top positions and fat cheques that were offered to them in
other parts of the world to come and teach in the IITs, despite
the low pay scale that the government offers,” one institute
head said. “With reservation in faculty positions, I see a day,
not far from now, when the IITs will crumble.”
Another institute chief said there
had been no bias against hiring faculty members from disadvantaged
classes if they were found meritorious.
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