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World Language Enrollment at Community Colleges in the United States Between 1960 and 2010

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Language Program Vitality in the United States

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 63))

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Abstract

This chapter explores world language (WL) enrollment at community colleges between the 1960s and the 2010s. Like 4-year institutions, community colleges experienced a major increase in WL enrollment up to 2009, but the WL enrollment at community colleges started to experience continuing declines to the present day. A major factor in the growth of WL enrollment until the 2010s was the increase in total undergraduate enrollment at community colleges, which was primarily triggered by higher participation rates of non-traditional students such as students of color, students from working-class backgrounds, and students with an immigrant origin. The chapter presents data for WL enrollment trends at community colleges and introduces the results of the Students and Instructors of Languages at Community Colleges Survey (Nagano et al., 2017), which has examined changes in the demographics of students taking WL classes at community college, highlighting the rich and diverse linguistic experiences that students bring into classrooms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Community colleges in this section generally refer to only public and private not-for-profit 2-year institutions granting associate degrees. Private for-profit 2-year institutions, which include many of the vocational and technical institutions, are not included because they have a different development history and educational mission from those of public and nonprofit 2-year institutions.

  2. 2.

    The MLA recent reports by Looney and Lusin (2021) and Lusin (2005) carefully examined and presented analysis of the MLA’s modern language enrollment data for 2-year institutions.

  3. 3.

    Enrollment numbers in Fig. 1 are slightly lower than those reported by Lusin (this volume) since I only report undergraduate enrollment. The MLA’s enrollment surveys include both undergraduate and graduate enrollment.

  4. 4.

    The declining trend happened even before topsy-turvy enrollment erosion at community colleges during the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic between 2020–2022 is outside of the scope of this review.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Tomonori Nagano

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  1. Tomonori Nagano
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Correspondence to Tomonori Nagano .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Emily Heidrich Uebel

  2. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Felix A. Kronenberg

  3. Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA

    Scott Sterling

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Nagano, T. (2023). World Language Enrollment at Community Colleges in the United States Between 1960 and 2010. In: Heidrich Uebel, E., Kronenberg, F.A., Sterling, S. (eds) Language Program Vitality in the United States. Educational Linguistics, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43654-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43654-3_5

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-43653-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-43654-3

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