2005-1-19
I'm Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Education Report.
The United States has more than two thousand four hundred
colleges and universities. About one hundred of them began as public
agricultural colleges, and continue to teach agriculture. These are
called land grant schools. And they are the subject this week in our
Foreign Student Series.
Federal land grants supported the building of most of the major
state universities in America. The idea of the land grant college
goes back more than a century to a law called the Morrill Act. A
congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill wrote
legislation to create at least one such college in each state.
The name land grant came from the kind of aid provided by the
federal government. The government gave each Northern state
thousands of hectares of land. The states were to sell the land and
use the money to establish colleges. These colleges would teach
agriculture and engineering, as well as military science.
Congress passed the law in eighteen sixty-two. This was during
the Civil War. Southern states had rebelled and left the Union.
The federal government wanted Americans to learn better ways to
farm. Another law created a center for experiments at each land
grant college to help farmers solve problems. This helped
agricultural colleges develop new scientific ideas.
The Agricultural College of the State of Michigan was established
in eighteen fifty-five, seven years before the Morrill Act. It later
became the first college to officially agree to receive support
under the act. And it grew into what is now Michigan State
University.
Today the university in East Lansing has more than forty thousand
students. These include about three thousand foreign students from
more than one hundred countries.
The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan
State says it had about three hundred foreign students last year.
Most were graduate students who were studying agricultural
economics, packaging, and crop and soil sciences.
This brings us to the end of the twentieth week of our Foreign
Student Series. Our series is for students in other countries who
would like to attend a college or university in the United States.
All the programs are on the Internet at voaspecialenglish dot com.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy
Steinbach. I'm Gwen Outen.