See also (Economy of Hong Kong) and (Education in Hong Kong) The implementation of compulsory universal education in 1971, following with an extension to nine years in 1978, give rises to an increased number of women elites. Besides, the transform of social environment in Hong Kong also contribute to the rise of women education. In the past, if a family does not have enough money to send both their son and daughter to school, they will choose to educate the son over the daughter. Nonetheless, owing to the economic growth since 1960s, Hong Kong has become a wealthy society with a significant change in population at the same time. The birth rate in Hong Kong steadily decreased from 16.8% in 1981 to 8.6% in 2014. It reveals that the nuclear family structure nurturing only one to two children in a family is common, in which girls could receive better education due to the more concentrated resources within the family.  According to the report of Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics by Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, a trend of universalism for boys and girls could be observed since the 1970s; and girls' enrolment rate in general was higher than the boys' since the 1980s. The gap between male and female enrollment in post-secondary education has narrowed down and female students even outnumber male students in entering University Grants Committee (UGC) funded programmes in recent decades. The percentage of females and male students enrolled in UGC-funded programmes was 53.7% and 46.3% in 2014, which is quite different from 32.9% and 67.1% respectively in 1987.  However, when specifically comes to research postgraduate programmes, more male students were recorded since the programmes are largely related to sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). People in Hong Kong have gender bias in STEM fields, perceiving women as less capable of mastering the STEM knowledge and pursuing related careers. Half of the teenage girls in Hong Kong were discouraged to focus on mathematics and sciences during secondary school, which lead to their lessened self-concept in STEM. Thus, the sex ratio of students enrolled in UGC-funded engineering and technology programmes is imbalance, which is 29.5% for female and 70.5% for male in 2016. The situation is not much improved as compared with 14.1% for female and 85.9% for male in 1996.

Answer this question "What is the education like?" by extracting the answer from the text above.
compulsory universal education in 1971, following with an extension to nine years in 1978, give rises to an increased number of women elites.