India wants to become a global leader in science, technology and innovation. Its universities are expected to help deliver that ambition. Yet faculty shortages and competing demands on teachers’ time can weaken their ability to do so.
The scale of the staffing problem is evident in parliamentary committee figures reproduced in PRS Legislative Research’s analysis of the 2026–27 education budget. In the January 2025 figures presented, 56% of sanctioned professor posts were vacant, alongside 38% of associate professor posts and 18% of assistant professor posts. These are dated figures for the institutions covered, rather than a current vacancy estimate for Indian higher education as a whole. Even with that qualification, the shortage at senior levels deserves attention.
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Senior faculty supervise doctoral work and help younger colleagues develop research programmes. Leaving these positions unfilled can weaken the mentoring on which future academic leadership depends.
Faculty recruitment is a long-term investment
Private colleges and universities face their own financial pressures. Where enrolment falls or fee income becomes uncertain, managements may delay recruitment or seek to appoint teachers at lower salaries. Those choices may ease an immediate budget problem while making it harder to retain capable people.
A faculty member’s contribution extends beyond classroom hours. Preparing courses and guiding students require sustained work. Research and collaboration with industry add further demands. Institutions need to account for these responsibilities when deciding how many teachers to employ and what support to provide.
Financial discipline is necessary. So is recognising the cost of repeated vacancies and disrupted supervision. An institution cannot expect to build a strong academic reputation if its staffing decisions repeatedly interrupt the work that would earn it.
Faculty shortages: Research needs time in the working week
Universities expect faculty to publish useful research, but their allocation of work must make that expectation credible.
Consider examination duties. A single invigilation assignment may occupy two or three hours. Repeated assignments across a semester take more time. Preparing question papers and evaluating answer scripts add to the workload, although both are central to academic assessment and cannot simply be treated as avoidable administration.
The distinction should be between work that needs academic judgment and work that trained administrative staff can handle. Teachers should retain responsibility for assessment standards. Scheduling examinations, processing routine paperwork and managing logistics need not all fall on them.
The same test should apply to admissions and promotional activities. Faculty involvement may be useful where subject knowledge is required. Routine processing or marketing assignments deserve closer scrutiny, particularly when the institution also sets demanding research targets.
Institutions should review how faculty time is actually spent before prescribing higher publication targets. Where research forms part of an appointment, the timetable should include protected time for it. Reducing administrative work will achieve little if the freed hours are immediately absorbed by additional teaching or committee duties.
This requires choices about staffing and budgets. Dedicated administrative teams cost money. But using trained academics for work that others could perform also carries a cost, even when it does not appear separately in the accounts.
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Professional expertise needs a credible route into teaching
A PhD provides valuable training in research. It should remain important for roles that require independent scholarship and doctoral supervision. Other academic responsibilities can also benefit from expertise acquired outside universities.
Professionals who have spent years managing industrial projects or working with communities may bring knowledge that students would otherwise encounter only after graduation. Experience alone, however, does not establish an ability to teach.
The University Grants Commission’s Professor of Practice guidelines recognise this route. They provide for distinguished professionals with at least 15 years of experience, preferably at a senior level. Formal academic qualifications are not essential where exemplary professional practice establishes suitability. These appointments are separate from sanctioned faculty posts and must not affect regular recruitment.
Institutions should use that provision carefully. A professional reputation may justify consideration for an appointment; it does not remove the need to assess what the person can contribute to a course.
Structured preparation could help. A six-month transition programme, for example, could combine supervised teaching with training in course design and assessment. This would be an institutional proposal, subject to applicable rules, rather than an existing qualification requirement.
Such appointments should broaden what students learn while regular recruitment continues. They cannot compensate for the absence of experienced researchers where research supervision is needed.
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Research funding must translate into usable support
Money remains essential, but allocations alone do not establish that research is being supported effectively. PRS reports that average utilisation of allocations under the higher education budget’s research and innovation category was 47% between 2017–18 and 2024–25. This figure concerns that budget category, not all research spending in India.
Underutilisation warrants investigation. It does not, by itself, show whether the principal obstacles were delayed releases, procurement difficulties, staffing shortages or other constraints. The remedy depends on identifying where approved funding failed to become usable support.
Universities also need career paths that recognise the work they ask people to do. Research appointments should be assessed through the quality and contribution of scholarship. Strong teaching deserves recognition in promotion decisions, with credible evidence of student learning. Professionals brought into classrooms should be evaluated against clearly defined responsibilities.
Expecting every faculty member to excel equally in every activity invites superficial compliance. Institutions should set demanding but realistic expectations for different roles.
A university that requires research must provide time for sustained inquiry. If its timetable leaves that work to evenings and weekends, the research target says more about management’s expectations than its commitment.
Krishna Uppuluri is a development professional, educator, and research scholar whose work explores the intersection of public policy, governance, rural development, and institution building.