EDUCATION REPORT - Foreign Student Series #29: Carnegie Mellon University

By Nancy Steinbach

Broadcast: Thursday, March 17, 2005

I'm Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Education Report.

This week in our Foreign Student Series we discuss Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is well known for its programs in computer science, engineering and business.

Andrew Carnegie used some of the wealth he built in the steel industry to start schools for children of workers in Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Technical Schools opened in nineteen hundred. Twelve years later they became the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In nineteen sixty-seven, that institute joined with the Mellon Institute of Research.

Today Carnegie Mellon University has more than eight thousand students. About two thousand of them are international students. They come from more than ninety countries. Most are graduate students from India, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey. And most of the graduate students are studying engineering, business, computer science and information systems.

About five hundred fifty international students at Carnegie Mellon this year are undergraduates. Most are from South Korea, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. They are mostly studying engineering, computer science, business and social sciences.

University officials say the cost this year for an international undergraduate student is about forty-four thousand dollars. No financial aid is given to foreign undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon.

But the Office of International Education there says the situation is different at the graduate level. Graduate students can get financial help in the form of a job as a teaching or research assistant. Admission requirements and costs are different in each of the seven colleges at the university.

Carnegie Mellon has just opened a campus in Qatar, in the Middle East. Undergraduates can study computer science or business. The university says students can receive the same education as they would at the main campus in Pittsburgh.

The university also has links with institutions in Britain, Germany, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and Switzerland. And it has a campus in Northern California.

Internet users can learn more about Carnegie Mellon University at cmu.edu. And our Foreign Student Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Gwen Outen.