Presidency University’s highly regarded economics department that has produced a Nobel laureate and several stalwarts is being forced to bring in guest professors to make up for an unprecedented faculty crunch.

Professor Sugata Dasgupta from Jawaharlal Nehru University, whom Presidency had invited to head its department of economics, is understood to have declined the offer while an unnamed recruit currently teaching in an Australian university is unlikely to shift anytime soon.

That leaves the college-turned-university with only nine teachers in the economics department against the sanctioned strength of 20. Five of them are teachers of the erstwhile Presidency College and could be transferred any day, sources said.

The university on Wednesday announced the names of four alumni who have responded to an appeal to steer the department out of trouble. Anup Sinha and Amitava Bose from IIM-Calcutta and former ISI teachers Dipankar Dasgupta and Dipankar Coondoo have been requested to take classes.

“It won’t be possible for the four permanent teachers of the university to cover the vast course. The other five were part of the erstwhile college and could be transferred any moment. So we have arrived at this stopgap solution,” vice-chancellor Malabika Sarkar said.

For the four alumni who have agreed to stand in, taking classes would be part of a larger assignment. Vice-chancellor Sarkar said the quartet had been asked to work as “advisers to the department”, helping the authorities select more guest faculty and improve the syllabi.

Dasgupta confirmed that he had given his consent. “I will take classes from the ensuing semester,” he said.

Sinha of IIM-Calcutta, who has already taken postgraduate classes at Presidency, said: “I had taught at Presidency College for 11 years and a teacher always loves to teach bright students. The only problem is that I have also been asked to screen guest teachers and wonder whether one asked to pick faculty should also serve in the same capacity.”

First-year undergraduate classes at Presidency are scheduled to commence on July 9. Second and final-year classes start on July 1.

Vice-chancellor Sarkar said the next phase of interviews for teachers would be held in July, but it could take two to three months for the selected candidates to join the department.

The shortage of teachers in economics is a comedown for a star department with a list of ex-faculty and alumni that reads like a who’s who.

“Names like Bhabatosh Datta, Dipak Banerjee, Tapas Majumdar and Mihir Rakshit took teaching to such great heights that being part of the faculty at Presidency’s economics department has long been looked upon as a privilege. It shocks me to learn that the same department is now facing a faculty crunch,” said a former teacher.

The problem of finding good teachers in economics is not restricted to Presidency, according to the chairman of the university’s mentor group, Harvard professor Sugata Bose. “Private universities and business schools are snapping up the better teachers with higher pay. Most renowned economists are attached with institutes abroad. (MIT professor and fellow mentor) Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee had alerted me to this. Vice-chancellor Sarkar is tackling the crisis the best way it can be handled,” he said.