‘Shortage of faculty with PhDs in engineering institutes'

Only 44.51% of the faculty in engineering colleges in India have a PhD, while only 55.49% have a master’s degree, data from the Ministry of Education shows.

Engineering institutes that rank in the top 100 of the National Institutional Ranking Framework rankings have a concentration of faculty with doctoral qualification. Across all engineering colleges, only 34.65% of faculty have an experience of 15 years or more.

However, among the engineering institutions that ranked in the top 100 in the NIRF rankings, 81.20% of faculty had a doctoral degree.

There are over 1,27,296 professors and teachers across 1,138 engineering institutes across the country, in addition to 33,891 faculty in the top 100 institutes. Pan-India, only 53,527 educators (33.21%) in these institutes who were not in the higher ranks had 8 to 15 years of experience. “This is a serious handicap since mentorship received during the doctoral training can play a vital role in preparing the faculty for a teaching career in higher education,” the ministry said.

In technical colleges, which come under the aegis of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), a BTech or MTech degree was enough till a few years ago; now the government requires them to go through a training period.

Similar to the trend in engineering colleges, in degree colleges, 50,160 (77.79%) of 64,484 educators in the top 100 ranking colleges had a doctoral degree. In the remaining 1,166 colleges, only 51.36% of faculty had a doctoral degree. The average number of faculty in the top institutions was 645, as opposed to 162 in the remaining institutions.

In colleges without non-technical education, the University Grants Commission (UGC) had this year said that it is not mandatory for Assistant Professors in Central universities to have a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. Instead, candidates can qualify for the position with the National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET).

UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said that more faculty members in engineering colleges of universities have a doctorate as they have access to many research facilities. “Therefore, they focus not only on undergraduate programmes but also on training masters and research students and can attract faculty members with a doctorate. Whereas standalone engineering colleges, most of which are in this category, focus more on undergraduate programs and very little on carrying out research. This may be why engineering colleges cannot attract PhD faculty members,” he said.