South Asian University campuses to be opened in SAARC countries: SAU President

The South Asian University (SAU) has started receiving funds from the member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a step that will help the varsity to bounce back from its financial crisis, SAU President KK Aggarwal said.

In an interview with PTI, Aggarwal said that the university, under his tenure, will focus on controlling the expenditure by attracting more students without scholarships and designing a rational salary structure for teachers.

“The university is supposed to be funded by all the member countries. Others were not paying their share for quite some time. I have spoken to all of them and by and large, their response is that now that things have started improving, we are ready to pay,” Aggarwal said. The SAU had been functioning without a regular president for nearly four years and the post was filled in December last year.

In the absence of regular management and lack of funding by the seven SAARC countries other than India, the university was facing extreme financial constraints, Aggarwal said. “If an institute remains headless for that much time it’s obvious that it will suffer,” Aggarwal said while stating that the governments of all the representative countries are now determined to run the university properly.

“We will work on limiting the number of fellowships and scholarships instead of everybody getting it. So a combination of some such things will help us to come to realistic budgets. We will also probably design a more rational salary structure to ensure that the members are not burdened,” he added.