Paid foreign trips, more scholarships

Offers varsity, but students want issues of hostel accommodation, medical insurance addressed first

Paid foreign trips, more scholarships

Offers varsity, but students want issues of hostel accommodation, medical insurance addressed first

Vasudev Gade, director of Board of College and University Development, met students' representatives to mollify them. Students complained that the Rs 380-crore plus budget had only provision of Rs 23 crore for student-centric schemes and many important issues had been ignored.

Suresh Jain, general secretary of Student Welfare Association of Pune, said that various student organisations met Gade as they were not happy with the budget.

"We feel that real issues like state of hostels, earn-and-learn schemes, medical insurance for students, among others, has been overlooked. Instead the varsity has focussed on trivial issues. However, in our meeting, they assured us they would look into issues like increasing stipend of students in earn-and-learn programmes, standard of living in hostels, among others," said Jain.

Gade assured students that many positive things are in store for them."The varsity has introduced many useful schemes this year. Until now, only professors going abroad for conferences or representing varsity were funded. But now if deserving students need to travel abroad for such things, their travel expenses would be borne by varsity. Secondly, the numbers of scholarships for MPhil and PhD students have been doubled," said Gade.

He further said that instead of two or three students, who received scholarships of Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000 for research, about 50 per cent of the enrolled students would qualify for such scholarships now. While Gade assured that the university had set aside Rs 1.3 crore for development of hostels, students were not happy as they felt they were empty promises.

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