Institutional responses to declining enrollments in LCTLs should be informed by empirical research on students’ reasons for (not) studying languages. This session presents findings resulting from inter-institutional collaboration on a survey of undergraduates at two large U.S. universities on the reasons students do and don’t enroll in language courses.
Language education in the United States is in a state of crisis. From the mid-1990s until 2009, enrollments in U.S. postsecondary language courses steadily increased. In the last decade, however, national enrollments in language courses have decreased quite dramatically, despite overall growth in participation in higher education in that same time period. The downward trend in postsecondary language enrollments holds for almost all languages, including the more commonly taught languages, as well as the less commonly taught languages. In order to counter this trend, more and more institutions of higher education are collaborating in promoting and offering language courses. However, very little is known about why students choose to study or not study languages. Empirical data on the reasons why students choose or avoid language study are scarce to non-existing. To fill this gap, two large research universities in the Upper Midwest of the United States joined forces to gauge student perceptions of the value of language study. This presentation presents findings from a survey of all undergraduate students at two universities. The survey focused on student reasons for (not) enrolling in language courses, and on student perceptions of the potential of programmatic and curricular changes to increase the likelihood of students to study a language in college. In addition to the survey, interviews and focus groups were conducted with representative stakeholders at the faculty and staff level to explore their perspective on and solutions to the language crises. Together, these data provide an empirical basis to formulate inter-institutional responses that have the potential to address shared institutional challenges such as declining enrollments in LCTLs. In addition to presenting major findings and implications from the study, the session will describe the value of inter-institutional collaboration in conducting empirical research intended to inform programmatic decision-making.
