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Studying at an American University, Just Not in the US

November 23rd, 2009 at 04:59pm Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

This week in our series on American higher education, we discuss programs that are available in the Middle East.

We talked last week about Michigan State University which opened a campus in August in the United Arab Emirates. MSU Dubai offers undergraduate degrees in areas including business, engineering, education and telecommunications. It also offers some graduate programs.

This October, Michigan State plans to open a pre-college program — the MSU Dubai Academy. The aim is to help foreign students prepare to attend an American school.

A lecture hall at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar

Other American universities with campuses in the Middle East include Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth. They have campuses in Qatar. New York University plans to open a campus in Abu Dhabi in two thousand ten.

But the worldwide economic downturn is affecting the plans of some schools. For example, earlier this year Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania suspended its plans to open a campus in Abu Dhabi.

And George Mason University in Virginia is closing its campus in Ras Al Khaimah, another of the United Arab Emirates. One reason is the recession. But the campus Web site says that several issues made it impossible for the university to offer the same quality education as in the United States.

University Provost Peter Stearns tells us that the effort failed largely because of a dispute with their local partner in the campus. The disagreement involved the operating budget and academic control.

The George Mason campus opened in two thousand six. But student numbers have been disappointing. Peter Stearns says the campus had between two hundred fifty and three hundred students this year. He says more than fifty of them hope to attend the home campus in Fairfax, Virginia, in September.

And he says George Mason will remain involved in education in the Middle East as an adviser to the American University in Dubai.

The Harvard Medical School Dubai Center was launched in two thousand four. It offers professional development and postgraduate training but no degree programs. Harvard says it has no plans for a campus, but wants to help Dubai develop its Academic Medical Center.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series are at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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Correction: George Mason University will remain an adviser to the American University of Ras Al-Khaimah, not the American University in Dubai as incorrectly reported.

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Studying in the US: Growing Interest in Agriculture?

November 21st, 2009 at 04:55pm Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Gitek Schoene, a graduate student at the University of Florida, measures the growth of landscape plants in 2004

In the United States, the area of study with the fewest international students is agriculture. The number was about nine thousand during the last school year. More than ten times as many studied business or engineering.

But the crop of foreign students in agriculture and natural resources was twenty percent bigger than the year before. The Institute of International Education in New York says that was the biggest increase of any area of study. So this week in our Foreign Student Series we look at agriculture programs in the United States.

About one hundred colleges and universities began as public agricultural schools and continue to teach agriculture. These are known as land-grant schools.

In eighteen sixty-two, Congress passed legislation that gave thousands of hectares to each state. States were to sell the land and use the money to establish colleges to teach agriculture, engineering and military science. A congressman from Vermont, Justin Smith Morrill, wrote the legislation.

The state of Michigan already had an agricultural college. But that college was the first to officially agree to receive support under the Morrill Act. It grew into what is now Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Today, Michigan State has more than forty thousand students. More than four thousand of them are international students. They come from one hundred twenty-five countries.

The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University offers sixty programs of study. Richard Brandenburg is the associate dean for graduate programs. He says foreign agriculture students this year are from countries including Japan, the Netherlands, Rwanda, El Salvador, Turkey, Sri Lanka and India.

In all, the college has four hundred thirty-three foreign students in East Lansing. It also has eleven students at a campus in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The only agriculture program currently offered in Dubai is construction management.

Michigan State opened its Dubai campus in August. It has only about fifty students now, but the university says it has received about ninety applications for admission this fall. We’ll talk more about foreign campuses of American universities next week.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Bob Doughty.

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