enrollments alarm

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Katarzyna Dziwirek wrote:

>Sorry, Don't have time to read the newspaper with the new quarter and a
>toddler who doesn't sleep at night... Did the article mention enrollments
>for other Slavic langs? Here at UW, our 1st year Polish class has 18
>students (plus one who just comes from time to time). It is the most
>students we have had in Polish in the 3 years that I have been here. My
>colleague teaching Czech reports a similar number of students in first
>year Czech. I wonder if this is a pattern outside of Washington as well?
>IF so, maybe the solution is not to convert anyone to Russian, but to hire
>more teachers of other Slavic languages?
>kat



The article to which Genevra made reference (in the NY Times on 10/9/96)
had no special category for other Slavic languages, but did have a category
for other languages (excluding the ones cited specifically -- French,
German, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Hebrew,
Latin, among others) and that category showed a modest increase.  That is
consistent with what I have heard (anecdotally) about increases in
enrollments in Polish and Czech around the country.  I think that we should
consider diversifying our departments to attract enrollments in these and
other languages and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe while continuing
to work on attracting students to the study of Russian language and culture
(including literature).  At UW-Madison we've had great success in keeping
students enrolled once we get them in the door of first-semester Russian
(our attrition rates have dropped significantly), but we continue to have
problems in getting students to sign up for 101.  Last year we tried
offering a section of Russian with 5 contact hours (the standard for the
course) in only 4 days (the fourth day had two contact hours), with Fridays
off.  (This strategy had had significant impact on enrollments in
Portuguese at our institution.)  It didn't work for Russian.  One of the
4-day sections had robust enrollment, but when asked, students in that
section said that chose it because the time of day was attractive to them.
The other 4-day section had very poor enrollment.  When all students in
first-semester Russian were polled about the 4-day sections, the
overwhelming majority (95%!) said that they would not sign up for that kind
of section for second semester unless the time the section met was the best
time of the day for them or all the other sections were closed.
Accordingly, we dropped the 4-day plan like a hot potato.  This year we
tried marking one of our first-semester sections in the timetable as
specifically for students with an interest in business, and scheduled the
class to meet in the Business School's building.  The section had robust
enrollment, but only 5 of the 19 students indicated any interest in
business.  The others signed up because they decided that that was the best
time for them to take Russian.  In total, our enrollments are slightly down
from last year at this time (65 this year, 70 last year in first-semester)
and we are still looking for ways to get students in the door.  We will
continue to offer "Read Russian in an Hour" in the spring semester (a week
before registration for the following fall) and we will continue to conduct
"Russia Day" for high school students from across Wisconsin and Northern
Illinois in the hope of attracting students to our first-semester course.
We also send faculty and students to area studies courses to publicize
language offerings and distribute flyers.  (If you like Russian history,
why not try learning Russian?  It's FUN!)  Any other ideas out there?

I agree with Genevra that this is the CENTRAL issue facing our profession
now.  We MUST stimulate interest in our target culture and we MUST get the
word out that students who study Russian language and culture can use the
skills they learn in our classes to get good jobs in Russia and in the USA.
(Remember when we had high enrollments but job prospects were poor?)  We
should also publicize the fact that students who study Russian have a very
high rate of going on to graduate school, so that if students want to go to
graduate school, studying Russian might improve their chances.  Perhaps
their applications stand out among those of students who have studied only
more commonly taught languages.  Perhaps our students pick up study skills
useful for preparing for the LSATs or the GREs or the MCATs or other such
exams.  Or perhaps they pick up study skills that help them improve their
overall GPAs.  Or perhaps they're just brighter to begin with:  students
seeking additional challenge.

Whatever the case, if the trend for declining enrollments continues, our
profession and our mission will suffer greatly.  We MUST focus on
enrollments and we must focus our attention on strategies for success in
enrollment building.

Anyone out there have some success stories to share?

Ben Rifkin


**********************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI  53706
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu