FIGURE IT OUT: NO SHORTAGE IN CENTRE-RUN INSTITUTES 

State-run universities are facing a teachers' crunch but the central higher education institutions in Bihar - IIT, NIT and Central University of South Bihar - are better placed. Here's why.

The central institutions recruit faculty round the year and offer better perks. State universities have not recruited teachers in over a decade.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), which shifted to its new campus last year, has 92 teachers and 1,050 students. The institute follows rolling recruitment process of teachers, which started last August and continued till December.

Teachers were recruited in six engineering branches of the school of engineering and technology, in physics, chemistry and mathematics departments of the school of basic sciences and in the school of humanities and social sciences. Sources said the institute will again recruit teachers in the coming months.

The faculty scene at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) is not as good, but much better than at state-run universities and engineering colleges. The institute was a state engineering college till a decade back and became NIT in 2004. It has a student-teacher ratio of 22:1 at 140 teachers for 3,200 students.

"Two year back, we had just 66 teachers, but in the past two years we have doubled the strength," NIT-Patna director Asok De said. NIT, too, follows rolling faculty recruitment of teachers. "NIT recruits teachers twice a year," Asok said.

As both IIT and NIT are centrally funded, they issue national advertisements against vacancies and get a large number of applicants. Better pay scale and perks is another reason why candidates flock there for jobs.

A senior teacher at NIT-Patna said on condition of anonymity: "Better pay scale apart, IIT and NIT teachers get cumulative professional development allowance of Rs 3 lakh every 3 years (Rs 1 lakh per year), which state universities don't offer."

The biggest beneficiaries are the students. "There are 15 students in the final year and we have five teachers to teach us," said Dhananjay Kumar, a final year MTech student (computer science) at Central University of South Bihar. "Teachers are always ready to solve our problems."

There are 97 teachers for 1,000 students in the Patna and Gaya campuses of the Central University of South Bihar.

In contrast, many Patna University departments have just one or no teachers. The history department at BN College has just one teacher. Similarly, Sanskrit, Maithali and other language departments at Patna College have just one teacher looking after the entire department.