The United States has more than two thousand four hundredcolleges and universities. About one hundred of them began as publicagricultural colleges, and continue to teach agriculture. These arecalled land grant schools. And they are the subject this week in ourForeign Student Series.

Federal land grants supported the building of most of the majorstate universities in America. The idea of the land grant collegegoes back more than a century to a law called the Morrill Act. Acongressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill wrotelegislation to create at least one such college in each state.

The name land grant came from the kind of aid provided by thefederal government. The government gave each Northern statethousands of hectares of land. The states were to sell the land anduse the money to establish colleges. These colleges would teachagriculture and engineering, as well as military science.

Congress passed the law in eighteen sixty-two. This was duringthe Civil War. Southern states had rebelled and left the Union.

The federal government wanted Americans to learn better ways tofarm. Another law created a center for experiments at each landgrant college to help farmers solve problems. This helpedagricultural colleges develop new scientific ideas.

The Agricultural College of the State of Michigan was establishedin eighteen fifty-five, seven years before the Morrill Act. It laterbecame the first college to officially agree to receive supportunder the act. And it grew into what is now Michigan StateUniversity.

Today the university in East Lansing has more than forty thousandstudents. These include about three thousand foreign students frommore than one hundred countries.

The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at MichiganState says it had about three hundred foreign students last year.Most were graduate students who were studying agriculturaleconomics, packaging, and crop and soil sciences.

This brings us to the end of the twentieth week of our ForeignStudent Series. Our series is for students in other countries whowould 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 NancySteinbach. I'm Gwen Outen.