The Indian government is stepping up its efforts to recruit professors from abroad, especially among faculty members from India who are teaching in universities elsewhere, report The Economic Times and The Times of India. The government has directed its embassies to set up video-conferencing equipment so that heads of Indian higher-education institutions can connect with Indian faculty abroad and sell “the dream of a classroom called India.” India’s elite engineering schools, the Indian Institutes of Technology, which have 25 to 30 percent of their faculty seats vacant, have designed advertisements and sent them to Indian embassies to promote in Austria, Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, and the United States. The weak job markets are helping with these recruiting efforts, say administrators. “There is currently an overflow of applicants wanting to teach in our institutes, as employment opportunities for Ph.D. fellows in the U.S. and Europe are not very bright,” said Surendra Prasad, director of the Delhi branch of the engineering schools.