Fareeha Iftikhar | 02 November 2026 | The Print
New Delhi: For decades, India’s top central universities and IITs have been sought-after destinations for academics. But in recent years, as more and more quality private universities have come up, quite a lot of faculty has moved out. The reasons for the shift vary from professor to professor: from greater academic freedom to more flexible working conditions and, in some cases, better pay. For many, private universities offer a way out of the central university limbo, where a faculty member can spend years in an ad hoc capacity with no permanence in sight.
It’s a worrying development for central universities and premier government institutions, especially for those already battling a significant faculty shortage, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
There is no consolidated data on how many academics have moved from publicly funded institutions to private universities, or when the trend caught on. But ThePrint’s analysis of faculty profiles at six prominent private institutions—Shiv Nadar University, O.P. Jindal Global University, Ashoka University, Krea University, BITS Pilani and Amity University, Noida—identified around 100 professors at various levels with previous affiliations to public universities. All of these people moved to these private institutions over the past decade.