The government has a bag full of goodies to attract distinguished and renowned faculty for its proposed world-class and central universities.

To deal with the faculty requirement of the 14 world-class universities and 16 central universities, apart from the new IITs and IIMs, government has lined up a host of measures which includes an attractive pay package.

Giving details of the measures, higher education secretary R P Agarwal said Indians teaching abroad will be offered the Ramanujan Fellowship.

The fellowship would offer Rs 5 lakh (Rs 500,000) for five years as research grant to them. Apart from this, they would be given a pay package of Rs 60,000 that would now be revised keeping the Sixth Pay Commission in mind.

Acclaimed faculty, teaching in India, would be given the Bose Fellowship. There would also be grants for paper presentation for all the faculty members, Agarwal said.

To strengthen the science stream, the research grant in the field would be increased.

"In India, only 2.9 per cent people are into research. Where as in the United States the percentage is 15 and in the United Kingdom the figure is 25 per cent. Canada tops the list with 36 per cent and all these research work is done through their university system only in these countries," Agarwal added.

The M M Sharma Committee has been formed to look into the requirements of the science field. As per its recommendations, PhD and MPhil fellows will now be appointed even if they don't clear the National Eligibility Test (NET).

A National Mission that was due to take off last year to connect through Internet all the faculty of universities and colleges will now be launched, Agarwal said.

Faculties would be appointed on contract basis to offer them flexibility. Guest faculty of various important subjects will be invited from India and abroad.

To retain talent, government has also proposed to revise the pay package of junior research fellows and senior research fellows. The junior research fellows will get rs 12,000 and house rent allowance (HRA) instead of Rs 8,000, whereas senior reseach fellows will now be paid Rs 14,000 and HRA.

The committee has proposed that the retirement age of teaching staff is raised to 65 years from 62. Academic colleges would be revamped and there would be comprehensive training programmes for teachers for knowledge upgradation.