India's universities are suffering from an acute faculty shortage, with some institutions unable to fill as many as 35 percent of their positions. From the country's elite Indian Institutes of Technology to regional engineering colleges, the dearth of professors has led to overcrowded classrooms, student discontent, and deep concerns about how India can handle a planned expansion of the higher-education system. The shortage stems, in part, from India's economic success. As the country shed its protectionist policies, it opened the door to millions of new job opportunities. Its strength in information technology is well known. The rapidly expanding media, entertainment, fashion, advertising, tourism, and investment-banking sectors have also absorbed many recent college graduates who would have once considered careers in academe. The faculty shortage has increased professors' teaching loads, making it difficult for them to keep up with their research. A decline in research has, in turn, made academic careers, even at the top universities, increasingly unappealing. As a result, many universities are settling for poorly trained professors. A recent government report found that 57 percent of teachers in India's colleges lack either an M.Phil., the bridge degree in India to a doctorate, or a Ph.D. Professors and administrators say that flexibility in setting salaries would go a long way toward fixing the problem. As it is, India's notoriously bureaucratic higher-education system is hobbled by rules under which professors, no matter how brilliant, are treated like civil servants.