A Military Education, Though Not Necessarily for a Military Life

Part 28 of our Foreign Student Series looks at two military colleges in the American South. Transcript of radio broadcast:
14 March 2007

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Our Foreign Student Series continues this week with two examples of military colleges in the United States.

One is the Virginia Military Institute. V.M.I. is a public, four-year military college in Lexington, Virginia. It accepts women as well as men. Its one thousand three hundred students are called cadets.

Older cadets teach new arrivals about the honor system at V.M.I. Cadets risk expulsion if they lie, cheat or steal -- or accept lying, cheating or stealing by any other cadet. V.M.I. officials say an important part of a college education is learning self-control.

Lieutenant Colonel Stewart MacInnis is associate director of communications and marketing at the Virginia Military Institute. He says V.M.I. this year has twenty-three cadets from countries including Britain, Egypt, Poland, Russia and Thailand. Most of them are studying engineering.

[Cadet parade at Virginia Military Institute]

The cost for one year at V.M.I. for someone from outside Virginia is about thirty thousand dollars. Graduates are not required to go into the military, but Colonel MacInnis says about fifty percent do. And twenty percent make it a career.

Another public military college in the South is The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. It also accepts both men and women for its four-year program.

The Citadel says it offers a traditional military education to its more than two thousand students. Thirty-eight percent of its graduates choose to enter the military.

This year, The Citadel has forty-nine students from twenty-four countries outside the United States. They are mainly studying business and engineering. The Citadel costs about twenty-seven thousand dollars for the first year. After that, it drops to about twenty-four thousand.

You can find links to the V.M.I. and Citadel Web sites at VOAspecialenglish.com. You can also find transcripts and audio files of our Foreign Student Series. Next week, learn about the United States Military Academy at West Point.

We began our series on studying in the United States in September. So far we have dealt with the application process, college admissions tests, English language testing, financial aid and other subjects. In the weeks to come we will talk more about individual schools and programs. If you have a suggestion for our series, write to special@VOAnews.com. And please include your name and country.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve EMber