Enrollment by college students in foreign language courses dropped a record 16.6% between fall 2016 and fall 2021, according to the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) most recent census, released Wednesday.
This is the MLA’s twenty-sixth language enrollment census, an analysis it’s conducted every few years since 1958. Total fall 2021 course enrollments in languages other than English were 1,182,562, a decline of more than 230,000 since fall 2016, the largest drop in the history of the census. The previous largest decrease was 12.6% in 1972.
The historic peak in foreign language course numbers was in 2009. Since then, enrollments have been in a prolonged decline, with the total percentage drop between 2009 and 2021 standing at 29.3%.
The MLA report attributed part of the decrease to the drop in the total number of students enrolling in colleges and universities, but, even with that in mind, the percentage loss in overall college enrollment was considerably less (8%) than the 16.6% loss in foreign language enrollments.
Of the fifteen most commonly taught languages, only three showed gains: American Sign Language (0.8%), Biblical Hebrew (9.1%), and Korean (38.3%). And the increase in Biblical Hebrew might be an artifact of the methodology; Biblical Hebrew is often taught in religion departments rather than language departments and therefore might have been missed in earlier surveys.
Two-year institutions suffered a larger percentage drop (24.2%) in foreign language course enrollments than four-year institutions (14.7%).
In addition, between 2016 and 2021, the total number of foreign language programs fell by 8.2%; 11,734 programs reported enrollments in 2016; in 2021, it was 10,773. Note: A program under the MLA definition means that a college offers instruction in that language; it’s not the same as an academic department.
A total of 2,455 degree-granting colleges and universities, or 92.2% of all eligible institutions, were included in the newest census. That’s a bit lower response than the census’s historic rate of 95% or higher. However, the lower response rate did not significantly affect the percentage decline in enrollments. Comparing enrollments only between those institutions that responded both in 2016 and in 2021 showed a decline of 15.6%, only one percentage point better than the headlined number.
Spanish and French reman the two most studied languages. American Sign Language is in third place, followed by Japanese and German. Rounding out the top ten are Chinese/Mandarin, Italian, Arabic languages, Latin and Korean, in order. In 1974, the five most commonly taught languages were all European in origin, but in 2021, only three were.
German had the biggest decline, 33.6%, followed by Arabic (27.4%) and Modern Hebrew (26.0%). Five European languages had losses of around twenty percent: French (23.1%), Portuguese (21.8%), Latin (21.5%), Italian (20.4%), and Spanish (18.0%).
On a more positive note, the report also includes case studies of ten institutions where language programs were thriving. Among the factors that might account for their success, the report highlights “access to robust institutional and financial support, the development of close ties between language programs and local communities, an emphasis on real-life language application and professional advancement, and courses that highlight the cultural component of language learning.”
“In a difficult time for language study, it is vital that we learn from these extraordinary success stories,” said Paula M. Krebs, the executive director of the MLA, in a news release. “These strong programs offer valuable strategies for institutions with struggling programs, and they speak to how transformative full- throated institutional support can be for language learning.”
The decline in foreign language course enrollments comes as no surprise to higher education observers, many of whom have decried the decreasing student interest in humanities studies and the corresponding termination of many foreign language departments at colleges across the country.
“In the current professional and cultural climate, we can’t afford to devalue the study of languages,” added Krebs. “The world is increasingly interconnected, and the need for knowledge of languages other thanEnglish is even more important. Institutions of higher education have an obligation to both prepare theirstudents for their future careers and create well-informed citizens. If they are going to fulfill theseobligations, they have to prioritize investing in and supporting language education.”
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