Study of Languages Other than English Continues to Grow, Diversify

Enrollment in courses teaching languages other than English at US institutions of higher education increased 6.6 percent between 2006 and 2009, and have diversified to include study of a broad range of languages, including Arabic, Korean, Portuguese, and American Sign Language.  Course enrollments in both undergraduate and graduate courses reached an all-time high of approximately 1.7 million in 2009, the last year for which data were available, according to a report published in late 2010 by the Modern Language Association.  The report includes data from 2,514 associate's, bachelor's, master's, and PhD-granting institutions, which account for 90 percent of all higher education institutions offering language instruction in the United States.  Community colleges and two-year institutions in particular saw increases in enrollments of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs)—including Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and several Native American languages. The ratio of enrollments in modern language courses to overall college/university student enrollments remained the same in 2009 as in 2006—8.6 enrollments in language courses per 100 total enrollments.

RESULTS

Overview of Language Enrollments

• Spanish continues to be the most popular language for college students to study, with 864,968 enrollments in 2009, up 5 percent from 2006.
• French, German, and American Sign Language follow Spanish as the most frequently studied languages.  Study of ASL increased 16.4 percent since 2006, to 91,763 enrollments.
• Arabic showed the largest increase in enrollments—up 46.3 percent since 2006, to 35,083 enrollments in 2009.

Enrollment Patterns

• At two-year institutions, all languages but Korean showed increases in enrollments between 2006 and 2009.
• Aside from a few languages—Spanish, Chinese, ASL, Arabic, Korean, and a number of LCTLs—graduate language enrollments declined overall since 2006.
• Geographic distribution of language enrollments has overall remained stable since 2006. But several states recorded double-digit losses in language enrollments: New Hampshire by 15.3 percent and New Mexico by 16 percent.

Less Commonly Taught Languages

• A total of 217 less commonly taught languages were offered in 2009, up from 182 in 2006.
• Overall enrollment in LCTLs increased by 21 percent (7,019 enrollments) since 2006.
• The most common of the less commonly taught languages are Vietnamese, Swahili, Hindi, Modern Greek, Hawaiian, Persian, Polish, Navajo, Norwegian, and Armenian.

The entire report may be downloaded as a PDF.

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 2009, Hawaiian reported more than twice the enrollment of any other Native American language, at 2,006. Navajo and Ojibwe were also common among Native American languages taught, with 914 and 700 enrollments, respectively.
• Among commonly taught languages, Modern Hebrew demonstrated the steepest drop in enrollments, down 14.2 percent from 2006 to 8,245 enrollments.
• In 2009, Spanish language enrollments continued to surpass enrollments in all other languages combined by more than 100,000.