A FUND to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds get places at the University of Huddersfield has topped £1m.

The innovative scheme to raise cash for scholarships to the university has proved to be TEN TIMES more successful than originally planned.

And that has delighted the University’s Vice Chancellor Bob Cryan.

He himself set up the scheme, pledging £10,000 of his own money to help, and attracted a lot of support from other staff members.

It was also backed by entrepreneur Graham Leslie, who offered match-funding to the scheme.

Prof Cryan studied at the university when it was a polytechnic and was brought up in modest circumstances in Deighton.

The Student Scholarship Fund now stands at more than £1 million. The original goal was £100,000 and the first money will be distributed in 2012.

University officials will meet in the next few weeks to decide how best to use the money, either as bursaries or grants.

The Student Scholarship Fund was launched in July. Prof Cryan devised a method of ensuring that every donation of £1 to the fund was transformed into a gift of £10, using a combination of the tax advantages gained from making donations through the system known as Gift Aid, and using two matched-funding schemes.

When a £1 donation was made, he personally matched it, making £2. Gift Aid turned this to £2.50 and the Higher Education Funding Council for England matched this, so £1 had grown to £5.

This sum then attracted matching funding from the Government’s National Scholarship Programme – making £10.