The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : UGC plans new schemes for girls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 12, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

UGC plans new schemes for girls

Professional courses exclusively for them in every varsity

HYDERABAD: Girl students have a lot to cheer about as the University Grants Commission (UGC) plans to start professional courses exclusively for them in every university in the 11th plan (2007-2011). All those enrolled under the programme would be extended scholarships. The plan is likely to be approved within a month.

UGC member K. Ramamurthy Naidu said the scheme has been devised to promote girl students to pursue professional courses, which was relatively less in the universities. He said the enrolment of girl students at the university level was very less due to societal and financial problems and such incentives would attract girls to professional courses that have tremendous employment opportunities. He reminded that the Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship that provided Rs. 10,000 per month to SC and ST research scholars was a boon for poor scholars and this scheme would serve similar objectives.

New schemes

Prof. Naidu said equal importance would be given to Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribe candidates in the 11th plan and several new schemes would be introduced to provide greater access to these deprived sections to higher education.

As a part of it, special grants would be given to universities and colleges that have relatively higher proportion of SC and ST students on their rolls. The scheme was also an attraction for the universities to devise special schemes to attract those students. “My effort is to get more funds for the universities and colleges in the State in the schemes offered by the UGC but universities should play a proactive role for this,” he said.

The State Government’s initiative of starting several new universities in smaller towns and rural areas in the State would prove to be beneficial in the near future what with the UGC planning to allocate special funds for universities and colleges located in rural areas, he said.

Additional funds

New institutions like Telangana University, Yogi Vemana University and Aadikavi Nannaiah University would get additional funds under the scheme. Special funds were also being planned for universities to establish B.Ed courses.

Arguing that there was a need for more universities as suggested by the Knowledge Commission, Prof. Naidu said that UGC 11th plan has many schemes in that direction. He said access to quality education was the mantra and to achieve this several new central universities were being established.

However, the State might not get a new one in the near future as it already has three central universities – University of Hyderabad, Central Institute of English & Foreign Languages (CIEFL) and Maulana Azad National Urdu University.

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