FOR MILLIONS OF young Indians, higher education is not just a degree. It is the first chance to be seen, guided, taken seriously. Yet India’s higher education expansion is running into a constraint that cannot be solved just by building campuses. With 43 million students, a student-faculty ratio of 27:1 and an estimated shortfall of 600,000 faculty positions, the pressure is acute. As the system expands, the competition for educators will only intensify.
The issue is not whether we can hire enough faculty, but to design models through which scarce teaching excellence can reach more students. This is the other faculty problem: not numbers alone, but deployment.
Faculty matter because education is relational. The Gallup-Purdue Index, which surveyed 30,000 graduates, found that what shaped engagement at work and wellbeing was not rank or major alone. It was whether students had a professor who made them excited about learning, someone who cared, and a mentor who encouraged their goals. Graduates who had all three were twice as likely to be engaged and three times as likely to thrive.
Teaching is not simply subject knowledge or credential. It is the ability to translate expertise into confidence, curiosity, and direction. For many students, the key memory of university is one teacher who changed how they thought and what they believed was possible.
Whether Indian students encounter such teachers will depend on whether institutions and regulators rethink the faculty model. India cannot train and appoint 600,000 outstanding faculty quickly enough. Nor can every excellent practitioner enter higher education through a full-time academic track. A better approach is to structure existing expertise so it reaches students deliberately.
There are models to learn from. The BITS School of Management introduced block teaching, designing the calendar around what strong faculty can give. The Design Factory model separates domain experts from full-time educators who hold continuity and assessment.
India can build such a model. We have engineers, civil servants, surgeons, defence officers, entrepreneurs, industry leaders with decades of expertise. Many can teach. Most never find pathways into higher education.
‘Wisdom faculty’ can be part of the answer: practitioners and senior professionals who cannot commit to a semester but can commit to two weeks, a practicum or an applied module. It is not about diluting standards. It is about matching expertise to learning.
Singapore Management University has a practice-track faculty model where a PhD is not the only route to academic contribution. India’s UGC opened a door with its Professor of Practice notification, but intake is capped.
Our faculty framework mistakes credentials for capability and headcount for impact. But behind every number is a student waiting for someone to notice their promise. Reform must ensure teaching excellence is not confined to a few classrooms but reaches every student who needs a teacher to open the next door.
