To help deal with severe faculty shortages, the Indian Institutes of Technology have asked the government to allow them to hire foreign professors as permanent faculty members, reports the Hindustan Times. The number of applications from foreigners, including those who are of Indian origin but not Indian citizens, is on the rise. At the same time, the institutes face faculty shortages of between 15 and 40 percent. The public engineering schools and India’s federally financed central universities can now employ non-Indian professors for a maximum of five years. The proposal is expected to be discussed at the September 10 meeting of the engineering schools’ council, which will be chaired by Kapil Sibal, the minister in charge of higher education. In a note written by the council to the minister, the institutes say that they are confident they can attract foreign faculty members without paying them more than Indians, countering critics’ claims that hiring foreign academics would create an unequal pay structure and lead to resentment among Indian professors. “Hiring foreign nationals on a permanent basis would make the IIT’s truly global institutions like the best universities in the West, which make no distinction between their nationals and foreigners holding requisite diplomatic documents,” an unnamed institute director said.