NEW DELHI: At a time when 'skill shortage' is frequently bemoaned by industry, nearly half of all teaching positions in IITs and over half in

NITs

are lying vacant. That's the sobering fact revealed recently in response to a question in the

Lok Sabha

.

It's not only newly created IITs and NITs that face shortage. Old IITs have over 40% of their teaching positions vacant and the situation in old NITs is even worse with 57% of faculty jobs finding no takers.In eight older IITs (including IT BHU and Roorkee University - now converted into IITs) the sanctioned strength of teaching staff is 5,356 but there are only 3,158 teachers in regular positions, resulting in 41% vacant seats. With 57% vacancy, IIT-BHU has the worst figures. It is followed by IIT-Delhi (50%), IIT- Kharagpur (48%) and IIT-Guwahati (42%). For the remaining four IITs, the vacant teaching positions range between a low of 19% of the sanctioned strength for IIT-Kanpur and 38% for IIT Roorkee.The numbers in NITs are even worse. Of the 5,891 sanctioned teaching posts in 20 old NITs, only 3,083 are filled by regulars. The 48% gap between required and employed teachers is much higher than vacancies in the IITs. NITs at Warangal, Patna, Srinagar, Jamshedpur, Kurukshetra, Agartala and Raipur have over 50% vacancies in teaching positions. NITs at Calicut, Silchar and Rourkela are the only institutes where vacancy is less than 40%.Considering the shortage of academic staffs in old and reputable colleges, one would assume the condition of newly created institutes would be worse. Yes and no. Data throws up some surprises. Four of the eight new IITs are on a par or even better than most of the older institutes. IIT-Hyderabad has only 1% of its teaching positions vacant while the corresponding figures are 26%, 46% and 57% for IIT Patna, Indore and Ropar respectively. The remaining four new colleges have more than 60% vacancy while IIT-Bhubaneshwar doesn't have a single regular teacher against a sanctioned strength of 90.Once again, the new NITs do even worse. There isn't a single regular teacher in the 10 new NITs. According to the NIT Act and IIT Act, these institutions are declared as institutes of national importance and government spends thousands of crores of rupees to encourage technical education in the country. For 2013-14, the budget estimates an expenditure of Rs 3,670 crore on IITs and of Rs 1,719 crore on NITs. If these institutes are in such a pitiable condition, one shudders to think of what the state of other government-run engineering colleges would be.The parliament question inquiring about the shortage of faculty in NITs and IITs was answered on March 13, 2013 and the ministry noted that the main reason for the shortage is lack of PhD candidates in engineering. It also observed that a majority of students prefer corporate jobs over the teaching profession.To make up for the shortage, institutes are resorting to contracts, adjunct, visiting faculty and online mode of teaching. It was also recently reported that the government is planning to engage trainee teachers who will be selected from the top 15% of students from these institutes.