The Numbers Behind the Crisis: Vacancies That Cripple Institutions
A Broken Pipeline: Why India Can’t Fill Its Classrooms
The Stakes Are National: What India Risks by Ignoring Academia’s Collapse

The Numbers Behind the Crisis: Vacancies That Cripple

The spring of 2025 arrived with the promise of progress in India's bustling education landscape. Yet behind the glossy institutional brochures and the glowing rhetoric of global rankings, a quiet, simmering crisis was laid bare in the halls of Parliament. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports had just tabled its latest report on the status of the country's higher education system—and what it revealed sent ripples through academic circles and policy corridors alike.

The numbers were startling. Over half of the sanctioned professor positions—56.18%, to be exact—at India’s most prestigious institutions remained vacant. These weren’t just minor schools scattered across the countryside. The vacancies were at the heart of India’s intellectual capital: the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), and dozens of central universities. Of the total 18,940 approved teaching positions across these institutions, 28.56% were unoccupied.

To the public, these figures might seem like distant statistics. But for students walking into half-empty lecture halls, doctoral candidates struggling without supervisors, and junior faculty drowning under workloads that once belonged to three, the numbers told a much more immediate and personal story.

The crisis isn’t evenly distributed. It deepens with rank. 17.97% of entry-level assistant professor positions remain vacant. Climb higher up the academic ladder, and the hole grows wider—38.28% of associate professor roles are empty. At the top, in the professoriate—the pinnacle of academic leadership—the shortage becomes a chasm: 56.18% of posts are unfilled.

These numbers don’t just represent administrative inefficiencies; they erode the very foundation of quality education. Faculty-student ratios balloon far beyond ideal thresholds. Courses remain untaught. Mentorship becomes patchy. Research stagnates. The institutions that once produced some of the world’s brightest minds are increasingly under strain.

And the damage is not only academic—it’s also social. Reserved positions for marginalized groups remain disproportionately vacant, undermining decades of affirmative action policy. According to the report, 1,521 out of 3,652 positions reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 788 out of 2,315 for Scheduled Castes (SCs), and 472 out of 1,154 for Scheduled Tribes (STs) remain unfilled.

The situation is mirrored in non-teaching staff vacancies. Nearly 2,000 OBC posts, over 1,000 for SCs, and almost 1,500 for STs lie vacant. These figures reflect not just gaps in hiring but gaps in opportunity—and a lingering disconnect between policy and practice.

The government has tried to act. A special recruitment drive, launched in 2019 under the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, was meant to address the backlog in reserved posts. By the end of 2024, it had filled 26,751 positions, including 15,637 faculty roles. Of these, 1,949 went to SC candidates, 771 to STs, and 3,261 to OBCs. A meaningful step, yes—but not nearly enough.

Institutions A Broken Pipeline: Why India Can’t Fill Its Classrooms

Why, in a country bursting with youth and academic ambition, do these positions remain vacant?

The answers are layered and complex. Aarti Srivastava, a professor at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, offered one crucial explanation: the supply of qualified candidates is nowhere near sufficient to meet the demand. “Everyone wants a degree for a better life,” she explained, “but this demand far exceeds supply.”

In a country where per capita income remains low, many students choose fields like engineering or medicine—disciplines that offer quicker returns on investment—over long-term academic pursuits like PhDs, which are costly and time-consuming. As a result, the pipeline that feeds India’s higher education system with trained educators is running dry.

Compounding the issue is the financial architecture of Indian universities. Around 90% of institutional budgets are swallowed up by salaries and benefits for permanent faculty. These include medical coverage, leave travel allowances, and other entitlements. In response, institutions opt for contractual or temporary hires, who cost less and can be cycled out easily. But this workaround carries risks. It diminishes job security, discourages deep research, and gradually undermines academic freedom—the soul of any thriving educational ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the recruitment process itself is riddled with delays and inefficiencies. From approvals stalled in bureaucracy to a lack of coordination between universities and government agencies, the hiring pipeline is anything but smooth. Even when posts are advertised, selection processes drag on for months—sometimes years. The result? Highly qualified candidates either abandon the pursuit altogether or take their talent abroad, lured by smoother recruitment, higher pay, and better research support.

Srivastava also pointed to an equity issue: while public institutions do reserve posts for SC, ST, and OBC communities, access to higher education for these groups remains limited. Without systemic investments in schooling and pre-doctoral support for marginalized groups, few candidates from these communities are able to meet the stringent qualifications required for faculty appointments. The policy to reserve jobs exists—but the pipeline to fill them remains broken.

The Stakes Are National: What India Risks by Ignoring Academia’s Collapse

The effects of this crisis ripple far beyond vacant chairs in faculty lounges. They are felt in the diminished experience of students—especially in state and central universities where most Indian youth are enrolled. It shows in the faculty-student ratios, which stretch professors thin. In some classrooms, teaching assistants and guest lecturers are expected to fill the shoes of tenured scholars. In others, entire courses are dropped or postponed for lack of staff.

These shortages have a chilling effect on research, too. India has ambitions to rise as a global center for innovation and scientific inquiry, yet its universities struggle to support the basic architecture of academic life. Laboratories go underfunded. Libraries fall into disrepair. Collaborative research stalls due to lack of faculty bandwidth.

This isn’t merely an institutional problem—it’s a national one. India’s demographic dividend is supposed to power its next generation of growth. But if students come out of universities without rigorous education or meaningful mentorship, the promise turns hollow.

Moreover, a system that over-relies on temporary hires also sows disillusionment among young scholars, many of whom dream of careers in academia only to find closed doors or precarious contracts. The risk, over time, is a kind of academic hollowing—where the best minds turn away from universities, and the institutions become degree-granting factories instead of centers of thought.

The committee’s report makes urgent recommendations: expedite faculty recruitment, ensure transparency and fairness, and phase out excessive reliance on contract appointments. It also emphasizes using technology to streamline applications and reduce interference, and demands regular workforce analysis to better match faculty hiring with institutional growth and retirement trends.

A Call to Rebuild

India’s higher education system stands at a crossroads. Its premier institutions are internationally recognized, its youth are eager, and its aspirations are sky-high. Yet at the foundation lies a simple truth: no university can flourish without a robust, respected, and well-supported faculty.

The chairs that remain empty in India’s lecture halls today represent more than just hiring delays—they symbolize lost mentorship, neglected research, and deferred dreams. Without decisive and sustained action, the crisis threatens to erode the very integrity of Indian academia.

Fixing this will require more than recruitment drives. It demands a national reckoning with how India values its educators. It requires strategic investment, institutional autonomy, equity-driven pipeline development, and above all, the political will to put teaching and research back at the heart of higher education.

The time to act is not tomorrow, or in the next grant cycle—but now. Because every semester lost to faculty shortage is a future delayed. And India, poised on the edge of possibility, cannot afford to wait.