Daybreak - Why teaching at India’s public universities now looks like gig work

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Teaching at India’s public universities no longer offers the certainty it once did. Permanent jobs have become scarce, while short term contracts have quietly filled the gap. Many teachers are now hired semester by semester, paid per lecture, and required to reapply for their jobs again and again. This shift has reshaped academic careers and changed how universities function day to day. What caused this shift? And what does it say about the future of higher education and university teaching as a career choice?Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. For decades, a teaching job at a public university in India meant stability. It meant that you had permanent position, a predictable salary, and a sense that once you

enter the system, you could kind of build a life around it. quite like the government jobs that most Indians covet. Breaking news, this is no longer true. Across our country, universities are quietly changing how they staffed their classrooms. Permanent faculty are becoming harder to find and short-term contracts are becoming the norm. Teaching, even at well-known public institutions, is starting to look more and more like gig work. But from the outside, this shift is easy to miss, the wheels seem to be turning in the same direction. Students are still attending classes and degrees

are still being awarded. My colleague Atul Krishna, who covers education for the Ken, decided to look a little bit more closely and he realized that the experience of teaching itself seems to have changed in some fundamental ways. And he met someone who is a part of this change. Anil. Anil teaches at Delhi University, or rather he teaches there as long as his contract lasts. He is a guest lecturer, hired semester by semester, paid by the class. Basically, he has to reapply for his job again and again. Recently, the most awkward existential crisis thing happened to Unle. He went to interview for yet another guest teaching position at a Delhi University college.

While waiting, he saw a familiar face. It was a former student, one of the first that he had taught when he began teaching four years ago. And guess what? The student was there for the same interview. But Anil has a PhD and teaching experience. This former student had neither. Turns out though, for this job, that difference did not really matter. Either of them could be hired or neither could. Now, this awkward moment captures something larger than that. than personal disappointment.

It reflects a new system of higher education in India, and in this new system, it seems that experience is not so important. Teaching jobs have become more temporary by design, and universities are relying more and more on a rotating workforce. So how did public universities in India arrive here, and why has temporary teaching become the norm now? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from

again. I'm your host, Nika Sharma, and I don't chase the new cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel Varghees and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Thursday, the 1st of January 26. Happy New Year, by the way. Anil is what universities call a guest lecturer. It is one of the two major categories of temporary teachers in India's public universities. The other one is ad hoc teachers. Ad hoc teachers usually step in when permanent faculty are away for extended periods, such as during sabbaticals or maternity leave. They earn roughly around the same as guest lecturers,

but they receive benefits like Provident Fund contribution. Guest lecturers do not. They are paid per lecture. At Delhi University, for example, that rate is $1,500 per class. The more classes they take, the more they earn, until they reach the ceiling that has been set by the University Grants Commission or UGC of 50,000 per month. Most never reach it. On average, guest teachers earn about 30,000 rupees. There are no employment benefits, no role in academic or administrative decisions, and very little job security.

At best, a guest lecturer might see their appointment extended for a year, sometimes too. Eventually, Eventually, though, the contract does end, and then the process begins again. New interviews, new colleges, and a whole lot of uncertainty. Anil, for example, supports a family of three on this income, and he worries constantly, obviously, about losing his job, which is why he does not want his full name used. He told my colleague Atul that most universities are just looking to save money. A permanent teacher earns around $90,000 a month, and for that amount, universities can hire three guest lecturers. What universities say financially, many faculty members say that students lose in terms of learning.

At the University of Hyderabad, faculty members say that the reliance on temporary teachers, especially for undergraduate courses, has affected teaching quality. Complaints from students have become more common. And this trend is widespread. At Delhi University, fewer than 500 permanent teachers have been hired since 2015. At the same time, roughly 5,000 teachers work on short-term contracts. At some colleges, guest teachers make up a third of the faculty. At others, nearly half. And at Delhi School of Journalism, for example, almost the entire teaching staff is temporary.

State universities also show similar patterns. Osmania University in Telangana has about 44% temporary teachers. At Mysore University in Karnataka, more than three quarters of the faculty are on short contracts. In 2018, the UGC introduced a rule limiting contract teachers to 10% of a university's faculty. This rule was widely ignored. And then earlier in 2025, it was quietly dropped altogether, allowing universities to rely even more heavily on temporary stuff. So for teachers like Anil, this meant more competition, more interviews, and the growing likelihood of running into former students applying for the same job. More on this in the next segment, stay tuned.

A major reason for the shift lies in how higher education is funded in our education is funded in our job. country. The National Education Policy of 2020 expanded the scope of undergraduate education. It introduced new vocational and skill-based courses from artificial intelligence to digital marketing and added a fourth year to undergraduate degrees. What it did not bring was additional funding to support these changes. Earlier, the UGC covered salaries for all sanctioned permanent teaching positions. Now, it only releases. grants for positions that are actually filled. So if a university has vacant posts, it does not receive any money for them. And that discourages universities from hiring ad hoc teachers to fill

those gaps. And since they cannot recruit permanent teachers on their own, the UGC controls that process, they turn to guest lecturers instead. Faculty members told my colleague Atul that this shift became specially noticeable around 2019. The UGC. UGC itself is under financial pressure. Its allocation from the government has dropped by about 1,000 crore rupees compared to a decade ago. And at the same time, the government changed how universities received funding, replacing direct grants with interest-feed loans that universities eventually have to repay. And that leaves little room to increase spending on salaries.

A decade ago, teacher salaries accounted about 80% of interest. India's education budget. And then a 2015 study flagged this as a concern. And ever since, budgets have only tightened. As of now, about a quarter of the nearly 19,000 permanent teaching positions at central universities are vacant. At state universities, permanent hiring has largely been stored. Faculty members at Osmania University say that the last major round of permanent appointments happened in 2013. and the impact goes beyond pay. Permanent teachers shape curricula.

They sit on academic councils and they help run placement cells. Guest teachers do not do any of this. And despite that, universities often assign them extra admin work, usually with the hope of securing an extension or, in rare cases, an ad hoc appointment. When it comes to teaching itself, faculty members say that the system creates instability. Guest teachers are not required to have teaching experience, as we mentioned earlier. In fact, Delhi University's new hiring rules explicitly state that experience as guest faculty does not count. There is also the issue of continuity. Guest teachers have little or no incentive

almost to build long-term relationships with departments or with students. And this instability is visible to students. And it is shaping how they are. they think about academic careers. Faculty members have been reporting a decline in PhD applications. Lesser students are now seeing university teaching as a viable future. Anil actually puts it quite simply. A school teacher in Delhi earns $1,500 rupees per lecture. A university teacher who has cleared the national eligibility exam also earns the same.

How is that fair? Why did I do a PhD, he asks. Anil has taught three Delhi University colleges in three years and to continue the next academic session he will have to interview again and he is already preparing himself not just for the questions from the panel but for the possibility that once again

he may be sitting across a former student competing for a job that barely resembles a profession that he actually trained Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top

of the website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Snitha Sharma and edited by Rajiv Sien.