Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced setting up eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven Indian Institutes of Management and 30 central universities in his Independence Day speech, the government is already working on identifying the states where these institutes will be located.
According to sources close to the development, the government is shortlisting the states where the new IITs and IIMs will be set up. The states will be selected on the basis of their economic and social status.
Also, the number of existing colleges these states have and their student population will be taken into account to determine the establishment of an IIT or an IIM there.
However, while academia is congratulating the government on the ambitious academic initiatives, it is also worried on how would the infrastructure and faculty needs be met for these new institutes.
At the existing IIMs, the faculty-student ratio is around 1:3 to 1:7. The top IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata have close to 80 full-time and part-time faculty members and are even recruiting back retired professors to fill gaps.
"It is very difficult to understand how the newer IIMs will be able to find the kind of professors who can make the quality grade. A decent IIM would need at least 50 members, of whom at least half would have to be full-time faculty," said an IIM professor.
He added that professors who are lured by academic careers abroad would only look at India as an option if the Sixth Pay Commission, whose report is due early next year, comes out with major incentives for the faculty of institutes of higher learning.
Under the Fifth Pay Commission, the entry-level basic salary of an assistant professor at IIM-A is Rs 12,000 a month, while the maximum basic salary is around Rs 23,000 per month, which is paltry compared to the salaries they could draw at any second rung university in the US or UK.