Mumbai: The prestigious centrally funded institutions - Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) - are currently facing a faculty shortage of more than 3000 professors. The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has rather a grimmer scenario to offer. The statistics for instance, reveal that one-third of the teaching posts at the IITs and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are lying vacant. The faculty crunch prevails in other major Indian institutes also. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore does not have even half the teachers it needs; the same situation prevails at the three Schools of Planning and Architecture (SPAs). In fact, all the centrally funded insititutes - whether it is the Indian School of Mines (ISM) at Dhanbad or the NITs that are spread across the country - are currently functioning without the necessary number of professors The IITs have the largest share of the crunch with an overall deficit of 1284 teachers out of which 222 teachers fall short at IIT- Bombay alone. The Dean of the Faculty Affairs at IIT-Bombay, A.K. Suresh, says that the crunch is due to their policy of rolling recruitment where the post is filled as soon as a suitable candidate is found. "Moreover, we hire the faculty on contractual basis and take care of their immediate needs," he added. By 2014, IIT-B will reach its expected maximum capacity of 8000 students and by then it would have to ensure enough number of professors to maintain a healthy student-teacher ratio. The situation runs out to a similar phase at IISc, which is a pioneer at the science and education front in contemporary technologically important fields, and the SPA, a specialized university, the only one of its kind that provides training in different aspects of human habitat and environment. Experts have also mulled over the grim situation and feel that the inability to find adequate and qualified professors may seriously hamper India's ability to groom top-notch engineers, scientists and businessmen of the future.