This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Financial aid is the subject this week in our Foreign Student Series on higher education in the United States.

Students who want to study in the United States may find that their chances for financial aid are limited. They often have to pay for their education with their own savings¹ or their family's money.

A recent report from the Institute of International Education in New York looked at the 2005-2006 school year:

Colleges and universities in the United States had more than half a million foreign students. 63 percent of them paid for school mostly by themselves or with family help. 26 percent were supported by the school they attended.

There are other sources of financial aid for international students. These include a student's home government or university, or the United States government. Private sponsors², international organizations and employers³ may also provide support.

Yet during the last school year, not many students were able to depend on any of these other sources. Current employers provided⁴ the most help. Still, they represented the main support for just four percent of international students.

Those at the graduate level, however, are more likely than undergraduates⁵ to receive financial aid in the United States.

More than eighty percent of foreign undergraduates depended mostly on personal and family money to pay for school last year. The same was true of less than half of graduate students. Most of the others received financial aid from their college or university in the United States.

A list of American schools that offer financial aid to foreign students can be found at a useful Web site. The address is edupass.org -- e-d-u-p-a-s-s dot o-r-g.

This site also provides information about scholarship programs. But it warns foreign students not to pay if there is any charge for scholarship application forms. You could be cheated out of your money.

Our Foreign Student Series continues next week with more information from the Institute of International Education.

If you have missed any of our series, you can find the reports online at voaspecialenglish.com. And if you have a general question that we might be able to answer on our program, send it to special@voanews.com. Be sure to include your name and country.

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