NU colleges to have CSR fund for poor students

Nagpur: In a development that would bring smiles on faces of poor students, Nagpur University on Thursday decided to set up a ‘College, Students Responsibility (CSR)’ fund in every college.
The amount collected would be used to help poor students, who frequently cannot afford to pay college or examination fees. However, the scheme would be completely optional for colleges and even for teachers, management and non-teaching staff, from whom funds would be collected.
The NU Management Council granted approval to create this unique fund in its meeting.A skill development scheme for students, who will be taught by NU teachers, was also cleared. It was decided to increase remuneration of PhD examiners and interviewers to Rs2,000 each, which was a long pending demand. The meeting would continue on Friday.
The CSR scheme is a brainchild of vice chancellor (acting) Murlidhar Chandekar, who put up the proposal in the meeting along with various others schemes for students’ welfare. All those were unanimously cleared by the members while appreciating the VC’s initiative.
“The scheme would be beneficial for poor students from rural areas, particularly children of farmers, who can’t afford to pay even exam, library and other fees. Many a times, such students take a drop or leave education halfway. The funds would come handy for colleges to help such needy students,” senior member Rajesh Bhoyar said, while clarifying that failure students wouldn’t be considered for this scheme.
Explaining the scheme, Vishnu Changde said there will be separate CSR accounts of all colleges in banks of their choice. “The principal, teaching and non-teaching staff, and even alumni association members, could contribute to this account directly. They can start with Rs50 or 100 per month, which is a negligible amount. All this would be entirely optional for all stakeholders and NU would have no role to play in it,” he said, adding that the objective was to send a message to the society that teaching and non-teaching staff care for their students.
Box
No online UG admissions this year
One of the important decisions taken in the meeting was to drop the proposal to conduct online undergraduate admissions. Earlier pro-VC (acting) SR Choudhari had informed that this year UG admissions would be conducted online like the postgraduate ones. But members took strong objection, saying that such decisions can’t be taken unilaterally without seeking consent of colleges and without being discussed in the statutory bodies. The NU administration then clarified that UG admissions would be conducted at the college level only.