EDUCATION REPORT - Foreign Student Series: US Colleges for the Deaf

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We are going to talk again this week about higher education for disabled students who want to study in the United States. As we noted last time, the National Federation of the Blind says there are no special colleges or universities for blind students.

But there are for deaf students. One of them is Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Gallaudet says it is the world's only liberal arts university where everything is designed for deaf or hard-of-hearing students.

On May 9, Robert Davila became the ninth president of Gallaudet University

About two thousand students attend Gallaudet. The cost for international students is about thirty-three thousand dollars a year.

Financial aid is available in the form of scholarships, but only after the first year of studies. Most scholarship aid goes to students in financial need who do well in their first year.

One scholarship for international students is for deaf students from developing countries. Another is just for students from China.

The university also offers an English Language Institute. But Gallaudet says this program does not guarantee acceptance to the university.

In the past year, students at Gallaudet protested over the administration's choice of a new president for the university. The protests resulted in the choice of a different president who is more popular with the students, Robert Davila.

He is a former chief executive officer of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. This technical college is in Rochester, New York. It is one of eight colleges in the Rochester Institute of Technology.

More than one thousand students attend the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. About one hundred of them are international students. They come from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.

The cost is about twenty-eight thousand dollars a year for an international undergraduate student. Foreign graduate students pay about twenty thousand dollars.

Both undergraduate and graduate students can receive limited financial aid. They can also take part in the student employment program. This program makes it possible for students to work at the school.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. You can find links to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Gallaudet University at our Web site, www.unsv.com. You can also find all of the earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series. If you have a question, write to special@voanews.com, and please tell us your name and country. I'm Steve Ember.