WASHINGTON-Laura Straub is a very worried woman . Her job is to find families for French teenagers who expect to live with American families in the summer . It's not easy , even desperate . "We have many children left to place :40 out of 75," said Straub , who works for a Paris-based foreign - exchange programme called LEC. When exchange programmes started 50 years ago , family life was more accommodating . For one thing , more mothers stayed home . But now , increasing numbers of women work outside the home . Exchange-student programmes have struggled in recent years to sign up host families for the 30,000 teenagers who annually come from abroad to spend academic year in the prefix = st1 /United States, as well as the thousands more who participate in summer programmes . School systems in many parts of the US, unhappy about accepting non-taxpaying students , have also strictly limited the number of exchange students they accept . At the same time , the idea of hosting foreign students is becoming less _ . In searching for host families , who usually receive no pay , exchange programmes are increasingly broadening their appeals to include everyone from young couples to retirees . "We are open to many different types of families," said Vickie Weiner , eastern regional director for ASSE, a 25- year -old programme that sends about 30,000 teen-agers on academic -year exchange programmes worldwide . For elderly people , exchange students "keep us young -they really do ," said Jean Foster , who is hosting 16-year -old Nina Porst from Denmark. Viekie Weiner is the person who_.
works for a programme called LEC works for a programme called ASSE is 25 years old hosts foreign students