Rising Russian Enrollments
John Schillinger
jschill at AMERICAN.EDU
Sat Oct 17 12:52:38 UTC 2009
Dear Seelangers-- This is heartening news, in keeping with the trend
described in the article posted by CCPCR (the Committee on College and
Pre-College Russian) in the ACTR and AAASS newsletters last spring,
and in a forthcoming issue of the AATSEEL newletter. The findings in
the article are based upon data collected annually in the CCPCR pre-
college and college census of enrollments. Data from this fall is now
being collected to further document the trend.
CCPCR encourages your institution to participate in this census--
please see our website at www.american.edu/research/CCPCR/ for
details. Data received in Sept. and October will begin being posted
this week. Excerpts from the article follow below:
From the CCPCR Website: A New Trend in Pre-College and College
Enrollments
The annual census of pre-college Russian programs began 25
years ago as one of the activities of the Committee on College and Pre-
College Russian, an inter-organizational committee that was created
through AATSEEL, AAASS and ACTR in response to the Carter Commission’s
Report Foreign Languages and International Studies. For nearly a
decade, CCPCR conducted its surveys by mail and phone, with results
mailed back to all participants. Today, this census as well as an
annual listing of college level enrollments in Russian, other Slavic
and East European languages, and a listing of US-based summer programs
in those languages are produced by e-mail contacts and are readily
available to all on the CCPCR website. The good news: after reviewing
years of enrollment data gathered at the K-12, and more recently, at
the college level, it is possible to report that we may finally be
seeing an upward trend.
As documented in the statistics link on the CCPCR website,
the peak of pre-college enrollments came in AY 1989-90 near the end of
the Gorbachev era, when responses were received from over 400 schools
with nearly 18,000 students enrolled in K-12 Russian language
courses. We know all too well, however, that the end of the Cold War
was followed by a period of declining pre-college and college
enrollments and program losses.
The extent of the impact on pre-college programs was
dramatic. By 1996 only 300 schools with 10,000 students responded to
the census. Concern about the extent of this trend led CCPCR to begin
documenting the termination of programs by listing school names and
states on its website, resulting as of this writing in a total of 208
programs terminated in the past decade. Currently, not a single
Russian program can be found in 22 states, and states such as
California and Colorado, which had 25 schools between them in 1996,
together have a total of only three reported programs. At the college
level during this period many programs were threatened; some
successfully gathered support and survived, but others fell victim to
administrative reallocation of funds to other programs.
This year, the Fall 2008 census lists responses from 106 pre-
college schools, a realistic number considering the loss of over 200
schools and their teachers since 1998. Surprisingly, however, these
106 schools have a total of nearly 10,000 students. Large K-8
introductory programs account for some of this unexpectedly high
enrollment, such as a FLAP grant to Memphis schools accounting for
600+ students, and individually strong high school programs such as
Staten Island Tech, with over 1,000 students taking Russian at all
four levels. Also contributing to the sense of rebound is the
initiation of 11 new programs in the past two years (listed on the
website).
But this is not just a K-12 pattern: growing enrollments
reported at the college level also appear to indicate renewed interest
in Russian. In 2002, CCPCR began documenting enrollment at the 1st
and 2nd year levels. Of 63 programs responding thus far this year,
over 40 have increased enrollments in 1st year Russian over their
previously-reported level, and some gains are quite significant. Some
examples: American U. from 28 to 55, Boston College from 14 to 26, the
U. of Oklahoma from 37 to 48, Ohio State from 94 in 2006 to 145 in
2008, Pittsburgh from 38 to 55, St. Olaf from 27 to 42, Texas Tech
from 22 to 44, and William and Mary from 40 in 2006 to 59 last fall.
Clearly, one swallow does not make a spring, but the numbers are
widespread enough this year to give us hope.
Prof. John Schillinger
Chair, CCPCR
Committee on College and Pre-College Russian
e-mail: ccpcr at american.edu
website:
www.american.edu/research/CCPCR/
>
John Schillinger
Emeritus Prof. of Russian
American University
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