A major NBER working paper shows faculty hired under India’s caste-based reservation system match or slightly outperform peers in student outcomes despite fewer PhDs and lower ranks.

A landmark study of Indian engineering colleges has challenged a long-standing criticism of affirmative action: that reserving faculty positions for historically disadvantaged groups inevitably lowers teaching standards. Researchers found that faculty hired under reservation policies produce student results equal to – and in immediate course performance slightly better than – those of their general-category colleagues, even though they hold fewer doctorates, occupy lower academic ranks and have less experience on average.

The working paper, Affirmative Action, Faculty Productivity and Caste Interactions: Evidence from Engineering Colleges in India, was released by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research. Authored by Robert W. Fairlie of the University of California, Los Angeles and NBER; Saurabh Khanna of the University of Amsterdam; Prashant Loyalka of Stanford University; and Gagandeep S. Sachdeva of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia, analyses data from a nationally representative sample of 50 engineering and technology colleges. The sample covers 2,710 faculty members and more than 20,000 students, primarily in computer science and electrical engineering.

India maintains one of the world’s most extensive affirmative-action systems in higher education. Roughly half of faculty posts in many public institutions are reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes – communities that faced centuries of social and economic exclusion under the caste system. Critics have long argued that these quotas risk diluting academic quality because the pool of candidates with elite credentials is smaller. The new evidence suggests that concern is overstated, at least for classroom teaching.

Lower Credentials but Comparable Classroom Impact

Reservation-category faculty were less likely to hold a completed PhD (14 per cent versus 21 per cent for general-category faculty) and more likely to list a master’s degree as their highest qualification. They were also more often assistant professors and less often full professors, and they averaged roughly one year less experience in higher education (8.91 years versus 10.06 years). They were less likely to have earned degrees from elite engineering institutions.

Yet these differences did not translate into weaker student performance. In the 12 colleges that randomly assigned students to classroom sections – a design that limits self-selection – students taught by reservation-category faculty ranked 1.44 percentile points higher in course grades on average. The advantage held after researchers controlled for faculty qualifications and remained in the range of 1.33 to 1.52 percentile points.

Longer-term measures showed no meaningful gaps. Follow-on course grades, standardised tests in mathematics, physics, computer science and electrical engineering, attendance, dropout rates, expected graduation, plans for further study and research engagement with faculty were statistically indistinguishable between the two groups of instructors.

No Evidence of “Teacher-Like-Me” Effects or Backlash

The researchers also tested whether students from reserved categories performed better when taught by faculty from similar social backgrounds – the so purportedly beneficial “teacher-like-me” effect. They found no statistically significant advantage. Reservation-category students did not fare meaningfully better with reservation-category instructors than with general-category ones across course grades or longer-term outcomes.

Concerns about resentment or discrimination against quota hires also found little support. General-category students actually recorded slightly better grades in classrooms taught by reservation-category faculty. The study therefore offers little evidence that affirmative-action hiring creates classroom friction that harms learning.

Research Output and Administrative Roles Show No Significant Gap

Teaching was not the only dimension examined. Faculty across the sample produced an average of 2.4 publications a year; the average for international-journal articles was 0.98. Differences between reservation-category and general-category faculty in publication counts, research funding and administrative responsibilities were small and not statistically distinguishable from zero. The authors conclude that gaps in research productivity and service contributions are negligible.

Broader Implications for Affirmative-Action Debates

The findings arrive amid ongoing discussion in India about vacant reserved faculty posts and the supply of qualified candidates from disadvantaged groups. The authors note that discrimination in private-sector labour markets may channel highly able candidates from reserved categories into academic and public-sector roles where reservation policies apply, though they present this only as a plausible mechanism rather than a proven causal link.

They also stress limitations. Data were collected in 2017 and 2019; the randomised classroom analysis covered only 12 of the 50 colleges; and the paper is a working paper that has not yet completed peer review. Results from engineering colleges may not automatically generalise to other fields or professions. The authors call for similarly rigorous studies elsewhere.

The research contributes empirical weight to debates that extend well beyond India. Many countries operate affirmative-action, diversity or preferential-hiring programmes in universities and the public sector. Critics frequently invoke productivity losses; supporters emphasise equity and the long-term social returns of broader representation. This study provides unusually clean evidence that, in at least one large and high-stakes setting, differences in formal credentials need not produce differences in instructional effectiveness.

The results also underscore the value of measuring outcomes rather than inputs. PhD rates, institutional prestige and years of experience are visible and easy to rank. Student learning, research output and administrative contribution are harder to observe but ultimately more relevant to institutional performance. By focusing on the latter, the paper shifts the conversation from assumptions about quality to measured results.

India’s higher-education system continues to expand rapidly while confronting questions of inclusion, excellence and social mobility. The NBER study does not resolve every tension in that debate. It does, however, supply rigorous evidence that faculty recruited through reservation policies are delivering comparable – and in some immediate measures slightly superior – teaching outcomes.