PhD Mandate Triggers Faculty Shortage

DOES YOUR FACULTY comprise research-active PhDs? This is an obvious question whenever a business school (B-school) applies for NIRF rankings in India or international accreditations like EQUIS or AACSB. NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework, an initiative of Union Ministry of Education) rankings give 30% weight to faculty research. This makes it mandatory for B-schools to ensure at least 50% faculty is research-active PhDs. This wasn’t the case a decade ago when a B-school’s role was to groom managers and number of PhDs in faculty didn’t matter. In fact, in initial years, most schools hired from industry to teach students the practical aspects of running a business.

Now, the need for hiring PhDs has resulted in an acute shortage of faculty even in leading B-schools. The Fortune India-ACRA Best Business School study highlights that only three B-schools have a faculty-student ratio of more than 40%, seven are at 30-40%, while majority (116) are in the 10-20% bracket. As many as 35 have a faculty-student ratio of less than 10%. “Only top 10-15 schools produce high-quality research scholars, unlike in U.S., where a couple of 100 schools produce PhDs,” says Varun Nagaraj, dean, SPJIMR. Indian B-schools produce 200-300 doctorates every year who get hired by top 10-20 schools. Others manage with a small pool of faculty members, who have to teach multiple subjects, leading to fatigue. There is no dearth of PhDs in India, though. The country produces 30,000-plus doctorates every year but their quality is questionable. “They pass out from universities that don’t have resources for quality research. Since their training is not up to the mark, we have no choice but to hire from top four-five schools,” says Nagaraj. In last four years, SPJIMR has hired 38 PhDs (faculty strength is 70), who are research-oriented scholars. Nagaraj says they find it relatively easier to woo top-notch talent as they are in Mumbai. Life isn’t as easy for IIM Indore director Himanshu Rai. “There is a huge supply issue,” he says. “Despite being in India’s cleanest city, people are not very keen to join us as the campus is out of the city. We have a decent faculty strength of 110 (1,800 students) but convincing talent to join isn’t easy. However, after they come, they realise this is one of the best campuses in terms of work-life balance and quality of research. We give generous incentives to faculty for research.” The incentives could be anywhere between ₹10-15 lakh per annum.

Raman Ramachandran, dean, KJ Somaiyya, says he gets at least 100 applications from PhDs, but hardly two-three are worth hiring. “They are not up to the mark. I would rather wait for the perfect candidate,” he says.

Faculty Development

As a premier institute, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has taken up the task of reskilling and training faculty. It has trained close to 100 faculty members till date. “We have been doing faculty development for 50 years. Faculty from other schools undergo training for four-five months. We improvise the capability of the faculty,” says Bharat Bhasker, director, IIM-A.

The country’s top ranked B-school trains the highest number of PhDs as well. It has increased intake of PhD candidates from 23 to 33 in last one year. Newer IIMs as well as larger private B-schools produce 10-15 PhDs every year. But in a country with 4,000 B-schools, demand for research-active PhD faculty far outpaces supply.

The huge expenses for producing PhDs are another stumbling block. For PGDM (post graduate diploma in management) or executive MBA, institutions charge ₹40-60 lakh for two years, but in case of PhD, they have to pay a student ₹40,000-50,000 every month. They also have to pay for national and international conferences the student might have to attend as well as other research-related expenses. “The cost incurred on a PhD candidate is almost ₹1 crore. We have increased PhD intake by 50% this year. We can afford it but not many can. Most lower-rung IIMs don’t have the financial power to incur those expenses,” says Bhasker. Most top B-schools produce a maximum of 10 PhDs per year. That isn’t enough to meet demand for research-active PhD faculty. There is an unwritten rule that an institution can’t hire its own PhDs.

Bridging The Gap

One of the ways top B-schools have been meeting the shortfall is by hiring global faculty. “A lot of our faculty is trained in the West. It’s easier to get research faculty to ISB Hyderabad now than it was 15 years ago. India is a happening story. A lot of people find India to be a superb laboratory for research. That was not the case 15 years ago. Many of our faculty members are editors in top journals of the world,” says Madan M. Pillutla, dean, ISB Hyderabad. In fact, ISB Hyderabad is the only B-school which has laid emphasis on hiring research-active faculty since inception.

But hiring global faculty and getting them to live in India hasn’t been easy for most B-schools. BITS School Of Management (BITSom) has devised a block teaching system under which it gets global faculty to come to its campus and complete a course in two weeks. “For two weeks, three hours a day, they get trained. In number of hours, this is the same a student would get in an entire semester,” says Saravanan Kesavan, dean, BITSom. Most global faculty does not wish to spend an entire semester in India. “We have the roster of faculty from around the world and can pick and choose the best and make them available,” he says.

“Decent B-schools want to publish quality papers as well as teach well in classrooms. You need good faculty to generate revenues. Unless your faculty can teach well and generate good learning outcomes, you will be out of business. Without good research, your global accreditation and rankings will be impacted. Finding faculty who can publish high quality journals and also teach well and generate good learning outcomes is a challenge. “That is the genesis of the shortage,” says Himadri Das, dean, IMI. Das says more than 25% (five years ago it was just 5%) faculty at IMI is research-active young PhDs. IMI’s strategy is to woo faculty by promising an open, zero interference culture. “They have well-defined KRAs. They have to teach 150 classroom hours in a year and get feedback from students. We expect them to do research for which we give generous incentives. It is linked to their confirmation and promotion. Other than that, we don’t interfere.”

Professors of Practice

A few years ago, the finance minister, in Union Budget, created a provision for B-schools to hire professors of practice from industry. This was in response to widespread criticism that most passouts were not worthy of being hired. A professor of practice can be hired on a three-year contract. The idea sounds great on paper but for an industry professional, wearing the hat of an academician requires different skill sets. Again, most professors of practice prefer to be part of city-based business schools; even top-rung schools such as IIM Indore find it difficult to attract them. “We selected two professors of practice but they didn’t join us,” says Himanshu Rai of IIM Indore.

While location is an issue for schools outside top cities, it is difficult to attract professors of practice even in top cities as the pay is nowhere close to what a corporate job can pay. Those who join are usually in the twilight of their corporate career or retired. Most schools don’t want to hire them.

It is not mandatory for a professor of practice to be a doctorate and ones willing to do a doctorate are rare, says Nagaraj of SPJIMR. “We hired Ashish Desai, who was with Niti Aayog, went to Mahindra, and did his PhD at IIM Kozhikode after joining us. But it’s not easy to get them. Again, no industry professional in his/her 40s would want to join us at half the pay. Therefore, it is easier to get the same 40-year-old professional who is CMO or CHRO of a leading corporation and teach as visiting faculty,” he says.

Kesavan of BITSom says a professor of practice does get industry pulse into the classroom but there are a lot of theoretical aspects that a PhD can teach better. “I would trust a PhD in economics to teach supply-demand curve, create a rigorous exam that will force students to think, ponder and come to the classroom.” He gives the example of teaching the business model of Uber in a classroom. “From an industry perspective, you talk about Uber being successful. The other perspective is to look at why Uber is doing so well, why we apply a Q theory model, which is a fundamental model of operations management. Applying that theory to Uber would give you insights into the business model to a level that is not possible if we have a superficial conversation about why this company is doing well. To get in-depth conversations, we need to have PhDs who are supposed to be spending all their time thinking about research problems and teaching.” Industry learning, argues Kesavan, can always be acquired through online courses on platforms such as Coursera.

Upskilling Faculty

In the race to get research-active young faculty, what are B-schools doing with legacy faculty members who are not necessarily PhDs? “In last 10 years, we have encouraged our faculty to do PhD,” says Nagaraj of SPJIMR. “We have also instituted a mandatory retirement age. I have faculty members pushing 65 who are not very research active. I have got seven-eight people out of the system. We call them honorary visiting faculty. They still come and teach as they are very good teachers, but I don’t report them in NIRF and AICTE as part of my faculty group. They were old and not producing research,” he adds.

The likes of IMI are also facing a situation where a large segment of their faculty is not active in research. Das says technology is helping them keep in touch with industry trends. “The older faculty members are good teachers and any good teacher would want to bring into the classroom something that is contemporary. They stay updated on the subject. We have Coursera For Campus and are using their content in classrooms. Both students and faculty watch Coursera videos and have a discussion. The faculty implicitly gets reskilled watching contemporary videos of Columbia or Michigan University,” says Das.

Kesavan of BITSom says the need of the hour is to give adequate incentives to faculty members to upgrade skills. “Instead of superannuating faculty, have better quality research. Research is important to keep faculty members up to date. At a top B-school, they need to teach 90 hours a year, so what will they do the rest of the time? Instead of working in administrative roles, they should do research, which will help them upgrade their schools,” he says.

Top B-schools are making serious efforts to solve their faculty problem and have been successful. The million-dollar question is whether the 110 or 150th ranked school has the resources to hire research-active faculty (entry-level 30-year-old faculty in an IIM or SPJIMR is paid ₹20-25 lakh per annum).