(This blog post draws from a presentation which I co-delivered at the 2019 American Classical League Summer Institute. The presentation was titled "Putting Latin in the Ears of Your Students (When You Don’t Know How To): A Presentation by SALVI" - this blog post has been updated to reflect more current information and data).
The Modern Language Association every 3-5 years releases a report on world language enrollment numbers at US colleges and universities - Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education. The most recent report was released in 2023 and reflects college enrollment numbers from 2021.
World language enrollment numbers at the college/university levels have been in a constant decline since the first report published in 2009. Between 2016 to 2021, while there was only an 8% decrease in college enrollment, there was a 16% decrease in overall language enrollment. Languages which saw an increase from 2016 to 2021 were ASL, Biblical Hebrew, and Korean, while most languages saw a decrease (see page 49 of the report for table of language enrollment for individual languages over the years).
Below are the enrollment numbers for Latin at the college/university level between 2009-2021.
- 2009 32,446
- 2013 27,209 (16.1% decrease)
- 2016 24,810 (8.8% decrease)
- 2021 19,472 (21.5% decrease)
Overall decrease from 2009 to 2021 is 39.9%!!
There could be a number of reasons for this rapid decrease in enrollment in Latin courses at the university levels:
- Colleges and universities are closing Classics departments (as well as world language departments), hence fewer students are taking Latin at the college level.
- Fewer students are taking Latin courses at the college level, hence colleges and universities are closing Classics departments.
- Fewer colleges are requiring language as part of their graduation requirements.
- Students are taking other languages instead of Latin.
- Students are already entering college with Latin credit from AP/IB, thus they do not need to take language in college.
- Changes in language trends as a whole.
- Changes in high school curricular trends (STEM, work/career-centered academies, etc.) are now manifesting at the college level.
- Latin in its current model is not seen as relevant in today's world.
Whenever the topic of the decrease in Latin enrollment comes up and the possible solutions are discussed, I always feel like (to borrow a Biblical adage) "we are pouring new wine into old wineskins." Maybe it is time for new wineskins when it comes to Latin at the college level.I leave you with this quote from Nancy Llewellyn's article "Why Speak Latin?"
“All those of us who teach have known or have taught a few outstanding students who could read extremely well and yet do not speak. But for every one of these, how many others have we lost? How many talented kids have we seen quitting after only a few weeks, or getting bored after a year or two and moving on to something they can internalize and really make their own, such as Arabic, French or Spanish?...What we call the traditional method can work tolerably well for the 50% of our class which is composed of visual learners (indeed, extremely well for the top 2% of these), but what about the rest? What about the auditory and kinesthetic learners, whose primary learning modes are so rarely and scantily addressed?”
For further thought, please also read Kenneth Kitchell's article "Into Upper Level Latin - A Conversation."