Military1 Education

Broadcast: Jan 16, 2003
By Nancy Steinbach

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We continue our series of reports about how foreign students can study at an American college or university. This week, we report about military education.

One American military college that welcomes foreign students is the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. It is often called V-M-I. The students are called cadets. One-thousand-three-hundred cadets are attending V-M-I this year.

V-M-I is a four-year military college for men and women. It considers the learning 1 of self-control to be an important part of a college education. At V-M-I, new cadets learn from older ones. One thing the older cadets teach is the honor 2 system. Cadets must not lie, cheat or steal. They also must not accept lying, cheating or stealing from any other cadet. Cadets who violate 3 the honor system are expelled2.

Chuck Steenburgh is with the office of public affairs at V-M-I. He says international students come to V-M-I for the military environment. This year, forty-three men and women from seventeen foreign countries are attending V-M-I. They study business, engineering 4, computer science, and other subjects. The cost is about twenty-four-thousand dollars a year.

Another American military college that welcomes foreign students is The Citadel 5, in Charleston, South Carolina. It also accepts both men and women for a four-year program.

There are about one-thousand-nine-hundred undergraduate 6 students at The Citadel. Public affairs officer Patricia McArver says the college offers a traditional military education. But, she says, only thirty-eight per cent of its graduates enter the military after graduation. She says international students attend The Citadel to study in a structured environment. This year, The Citadel has fifty-seven international students from twenty-seven countries. They are studying mainly business, science, computer science, mathematics and engineering.

It costs almost twenty-thousand dollars to attend The Citadel for the first year. After that, the cost drops to about sixteen-thousand dollars.

You can use a computer to get more information about these American military colleges on their Internet Web sites. V-M-I抯 address is w-w-w dot v-m-i dot e-d-u.(www.vmi.edu)

The Citadel can be found at w-w-w dot c-i-t-a-d-e-l dot e-d-u.(www.citadel.edu)

This V-O-A Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach.
1. military [5mIlItErI] adj. 军事的, 军用的
2. expel [Iks5pel] v. 驱逐, 开除, 排出, 发射