Over the next three years, IIT Madras will hire nearly 100 foreign nationals, including persons of Indian origin, as faculty members, according to Pawan Goenka, Chairman of the Board of Governors.

This is to mainly ensure diversity in research, said Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras. Not all nationalities think alike, he said.

Proposal approved

The Board of Governors today approved a proposal from Ramamurthi to hire foreign nationals to faculty positions.

Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, was on Tuesday granted a second term for three years as chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Madras with effect from June 9.

IIT Madras has 9,200 students and 600 faculty members with one faculty member for every 15 students, while the government prescribed norm is 1:10. Ramamurthi said a 1:12 ratio was quite comfortable and all IITs have a similar ratio.

Goenka said the director targeted to have around 100 foreign faculty members in the next three years. “It is doable, and we have put a plan in place and will see results of it in next semester,” he said.

In terms of preferred locations for both students and faculty, the IITs at Delhi and Mumbai are ahead of IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur. However, lot of people would like to live inside IIT Madras. “We need to do more work to make IIT Madras an attractive place for both students and faculty,” Goenka said.

The biggest challenge that IITs are facing is recruiting enough faculty members of high quality. IITs have not lowered the bar for faculty, with passion for research and teaching being the main criteria.

Analysing preferences

IIT Madras is trying to find out why it is not preferred by students and faculty and why only 10of the top 100 choose IIT Madras.

“Why is it that some companies don’t come to IIT Madras and go only to the two other IITs? All of these factors are being looked into in a systematic manner,” Goenka said.

Ramamurthi said the government has increased the budget for IIT Madras to ₹750 crore for 2017-18 from ₹450 crore last year.

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