The mere mention of the Indian Institutes of Technology conjures up images of academic rigor and excellence. Alumni are fond of mentioning how Indian students who cannot get into the IIT of their choice sometimes end up at the Ivies in the United States -- their safety schools.
But the IITs also face a major problem: lack of new faculty members.“We have very few students in India going for their Ph.Ds. And those that go for a doctoral degree tend to do it outside India, and prefer to stay back and work there,” said Manindra Agrawal, dean of resource planning and generation and a computer science professor at IIT Kanpur. ...