UEI Global Announces Special Pricing For Girls
A harsh but unfortunate reality of our times is, that women have much lower literacy rate than men, especially in a conservative developing country like India. Far fewer girls are enrolled in the schools, and many of them drop out. According to a 1998 report by U.S. Department of Commerce, the chief barrier to female education in India are inadequate school facilities, shortage of female teachers and gender bias in curriculum, and the worst and most prevalent of all, poverty. Conservative cultural attitudes, especially among the rural areas, prevent many girls from attending school.
The number of literate women among the female population of India was between 2-6% from the British Raj onwards to the formation of the Republic of India in 1947. Concerted efforts led to improvement from 15.3% in 1961 to 28.5% in 1981. By 2001 literacy for women had exceeded 50% of the overall female population, though these statistics were still very low compared to world standards and even male literacy within India. Indian women like Indray Nooyi, Kalpana Chawla, Indra Gandhi, Parmeshwar Godrej, and Aishwarya Rai have carved a niche for themselves among every possible field from business to politics to entertainment to science. However, these achievements are few and far in between, and the majority of the female population is still denied the equal opportunities it so rightly deserves.
Currently, a very small proportion of both men and women have a college education, just over 3 percent of men and 1 percent of women. Although a very small proportion of the Indian population attends college, women account for only a third of the students at this level (Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), 1993).
Recently the Indian government has launched Saakshar Bharat Mission for Female Literacy. This mission aims to bring down female illiteracy by half of its present level. However, according to prominent educator Sita Anantha Raman, while the educated Indian women workforce maintains professionalism, the men outnumber them in most fields and, in some cases, receive higher income for the same positions.
To promote this cause further – UEI Global has announced an across the board 25 % lower tuition fee for all girl students, for all degree programs! This latest endeavour is one is a series of efforts from our side to provide quality education to one and all. Among them is the innovative student financing plan for needy students based on not just family and income background but the likelihood of the contender’s success or failure at the workplace. Also with the UEI Global Motto of “Education to Employment” we then proceed to ensure that our students are proficient in skills required to actually succeed in their chosen professions. The biggest factor we follow in this is to teach the student a working knowledge of English and develop their personality and etiquette keeping success in the job interview as the goal.
This measure is in keeping with the larger goal of UEI Global to promote equitable education across all of the sections of society. Primary education one can only hope will be taken care of by the government, with the implementation of the Right to Education Act. Higher education may still seem like a distant dream to many girls in India, with this initiative we hope to do our bit in making it a little more achievable. We hope that more private institutions will follow our example, since a quality education leading to employment for all is the only way ahead for a country like ours to prosper.
