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EDUCATION REPORT - March 20, 2003: Foreign Student Series #27 >Purdue University - 2003-03-19


This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We continue our series of reports for students around the world who want to attend a college or university in the United States. This week, we tell about a university known for its agricultural and engineering programs.

The school is Purdue University. It is in the city of West Lafayette, Indiana, in the part of America known as the Midwest. Purdue began as an agricultural college more than two-hundred years ago. It was named for a local business leader, John Purdue. He gave the school one-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars to get started. Classes began at Purdue in eighteen-seventy-four. At that time, the college had six teachers and thirty-nine students.

Purdue has grown a great deal since then. Today, the university offers more than five-hundred areas of study. It has many different colleges. In addition to agriculture and engineering, these include business, education, technology and veterinary medicine. Professors also do research and direct student progress in the university's graduate schools.

This year, Purdue University has more than thirty-eight-thousand students at its main campus. More than five-thousand of these students are from outside the United States. They are from one-hundred-thirty countries in all. The largest number of students -- one-thousand-thirty -- are from India. Next is China, with more than seven-hundred students at Purdue.

Other nations with more than one-hundred students at Purdue this year are South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Almost two-thirds of the foreign students are in graduate programs. Most are studying agriculture, engineering, science and business.

Graduate students pay about the same as undergraduates to attend Purdue. The cost is about twenty-five-thousand dollars for one year. That includes classes, housing, food, books and travel costs. The university does not offer aid to international students before they arrive for classes. Students may get some loans after they begin their studies.

You can get more information about Purdue University at its Web site. The address is purdue dot e-d-u. Purdue is spelled P-U-R-D-U-E.

This was week number twenty-seven of our Foreign Student Series. You can find the other programs on our Web site: voaspecialenglish dot com.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach.

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