New Delhi — Adding more detail to India’s chronic faculty shortage, an Indian news Web site, ExpressBuzz, reports that one in five faculty positions is vacant at India’s seven elite, public management schools.

Nearly 300,000 aspirants — an all-time high — took the entrance examination last month for admission into one of the country’s Indian Institutes of Management. ExpressBuzz obtained the numbers of unfilled positions from the ministry in charge of higher education, under open-records laws.

Institute officials blame the shortage on “unattractive pay” and the institutes’ lack of autonomy, which makes it difficult for them to raise faculty salaries, the news site reports.

An entry-level professor at one of the management schools is paid 18,400 rupees ($376) a month, substantially less than what a graduate of the same institute can earn in a corporate job.

India’s other higher-education crown jewels, the 10 Indian Institutes of Technology, face faculty shortages of 20 percent to 30 percent, for similar reasons. And a government report this year found that about 50 percent of positions at federal and state-financed universities are vacant.

That may soon change. A report in the Hindustan Times said the global economic downturn may force engineering graduates without jobs to consider teaching as an option.

Bright engineers and software professionals are increasingly taking up academic jobs, which could help answer industry concerns about the poor quality of teaching in most engineering colleges, the newspaper said. —Shailaja Neelakantan