Survey of Enrollments in Russian Language Classes, 2023
Background
This survey was first conducted by CCPCR, The Committee on College and Pre-College Russian. The committee was created in 1984 as a result of the Report of the National Committee for Russian Language Study (1983), which itself followed a report of the Carter administration’s Presidential Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies (1979). Noting (in 1983) that “enrollments in the Russian language have dropped more precipitously than those in any other major modern language,” the Committee for Russian Language Study, composed of representatives of AAASS, AATSEEL, and ACTR, made 12 recommendations in the Report, among which was an initiative to strengthen pre-college Russian programs and establish a survey of pre-college Russian teaching.
In 2002, CCPCR added an annual fall survey of college/university-level Russian enrollments at the 1st and 2nd year levels. This survey was coordinated from 2002-2018 by John Schillinger, now Emeritus Professor of Russian from American University in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Professor Schillinger retired from heading the survey and SRAS, an organization specialized in study abroad to Eurasia and promoting and supporting the study of Eurasia in North America, took over. Find out more about SRAS and our varied projects.
Since 2018 SRAS has, in conference with several Russian professors, sought to make the survey even richer and more informative. The survey was moved to a larger, electronic questionnaire and all previous information was loaded into a single database to allow for extended analysis and the creation of graphics. Additional questions are added based on interests professors expressed in focus groups conducted by SRAS.
If you are interested in supporting Russian language study at the pre-college or college level or wish to connect with SRAS, either to add information about your program, ask questions, or make recommendations for our projects, please contact us.
Survey of Fall Enrollments 2023
Overall
Demographics
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, overall undergraduate student enrollment in the US has fallen every year since 2012, with the exception of 2022, when numbers rose by 2.1%. However, the report also indicated that freshman enrollment continued to fall that same year – by 3.6%. Thus, the boost in enrollments must have come as students who had stepped away from programs returned to them as sophomores or upperclassmen. The bump in numbers will thus likely not be sustained.
Falling enrollments stem from falling birthrates, which have been on a downward trajectory in the US since the 1950s. The last rise, a small boost in the mid-2000s that pushed fertility rates briefly above two, peaked in 2007 before being cut short by the Great Recession. The last of those children should be 18 within two years and freshmen classes can be expected to be smaller than 2025 levels for about two decades after that. Fertility rates continue to generally decline across nearly all US states for multiple socioeconomic reasons. They are currently at historic lows of 1.5-1.6 and are expected to remain low.
Changing Trends in Higher Education
Adding to this, college-age individuals are increasingly choosing to pursue shorter-term education – in community colleges, trade schools, or certification programs. This trend is additionally pushing down enrollment at the 4-year institutions where the vast majority of the Russian-language programs we poll are located.
A recent Modern Language Association (MLA) report indicates that language enrollments in particular are falling at about double the rate of overall college enrollment losses. The report shows 29% fewer students taking a language course in 2021 than in 2009, when such enrollments peaked.
The MLA report showed Russian with relatively modest enrollments of 17,598. However, Russian has also sustained a below average decrease in enrollments. Between 2016 and 2021 (the years compared in the last MLA report), Russian enrollments fell by -13.1% whereas the average for all languages was -16.6%. Russian programs fared better than those for German (–33.6%), French (–23.1%), Arabic (–27.4%), and Chinese (–14.3%).
Worsening international relations with Russia and China may be helping to sustain Russian and Chinese above the declines seen by most other languages in the MLA survey. Even as US business interests in those two countries have suffered, awareness of the need for speakers of these languages in diplomacy and national security fields has likely been boosted.
Our Survey of Russian Language Enrollments relies on a smaller pool of programs than used in the MLA survey. However, our numbers align; we also recorded a drop in average individual program enrollment of 13% over the same time period – from 46 to 40, in line with MLA’s report. Since 2021, average enrollment has further fallen to 36, down by another 10%.
Overall Reporting for the Survey of Russian Language Enrollments
Below are first and second year fall enrollments as reported since 2002. As most such language classes are taught as two-part, year-long classes, it is assumed that spring enrollment should be roughly equivalent to fall.
In total, 171 programs responded. Of those 167 currently have enrollments. Four indicated that they are still in existence, but currently dormant.
Note that the dramatically higher student numbers reported in 2022 and 2023 are the result of more programs reporting – and not due to higher enrollments.
Program Size and Growth
To track trends in enrollment, we can calculate year-on-year growth for any program reporting for two consecutive years. For 2022-2023, we have had more consistent reporting than at any other time in our survey – more than 90% of programs that reported in 2022 reported again in 2023.
About two thirds of these programs reported negative growth, with more than a third reporting strong negative growth exceeding 20%. The average program reported a contraction of about 5%. However, if a single outlier program – a small program that reported 350% growth (recovering from 3 to 10 students) – is taken out of the mix, the average contraction is about 7.4%.
This year, all categories are significantly negative for the first time in the history of the survey.
Program size includes first and second year as well as advanced students taken together. Over time, we can see that programs larger than 60 claim proportionately a much smaller share than in previous years. In some cases, programs have shrunk to smaller categories. The major driver of this trend, however, it that higher response rates have also meant that smaller programs, which have been more likely to inconsistently report year-on-year, are better represented.
Language Requirements
Nationally, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni reports that only 129 of 1135 surveyed colleges and universities listed foreign language study as a general requirement for the 2021-2022 school year, down slightly from 136 in 2017.
This means only 11.4% of universities surveyed by the council require foreign language study to graduate. In contrast, 35.1% of the 171 universities with Russian programs included in this survey have a general language requirement.
Language requirements are likely to support diversity in the languages offered at an institution; a large, diverse population making individual choices is likely to be diverse in the choices they make if given a competitive range of options. Thus, institutions with language requirements appear to be three times more likely to host a Russian program.
Of the 146 programs reporting year-on-year, 19 reported that language requirements were eased (moving from required for all students to required for certain majors or simply cancelled altogether). Meanwhile, 10 programs reported strengthened requirements. Overall, those without language requirements gained in percentage – from 18% to about 23%.
Other Opportunities for Language Learning and Exposure
While most first and second year language classes are taught as two-part, year-long courses, this is not always the case. Some institutions offer spring and/or summer intensive classes, which concentrate a full year’s curriculum into one spring semester or summer session. Some students also choose to earn their language credits through study abroad and are not counted as enrolled in one of the standard university programs above. Finally, separate heritage speaker programs are available at many universities, serving immigrants, their children, and adoptees entering colleges.
All of these can absorb the same demand for basic language instruction that standard year-long first and second year courses rely on. Therefore, this survey began tracking heritage speaker programs and spring intensive enrollments in 2018 and summer intensive as of 2020 to gain a fuller picture of the demand for Russian language instruction.
Study abroad can also absorb demand for language instruction in higher education. However, study abroad is not specifically tracked by university professors – which is who we poll for this survey. Therefore, we do not currently track study abroad numbers here.
Spring and Summer Intensives
Summer intensive courses were offered by 31 reporting institutions in 2023 with a total of 487 students enrolled.
The significant drop between 2022 and 2023 is largely explained by the absence of Middlebury, whose summer program has typically been the largest reported with over 150 students in that single program.
Of the 31 programs shown here, 18 reported year-on-year. The eight largest of those programs all reported enrollment decreases of between 25-74%. While some smaller programs experienced growth, these substantial declines account for most of the rest of the fall.
The largest programs for 2023 were held at University of Texas at Austin (49), University of Pittsburgh (48), Indiana University Bloomington (46), University of Georgia (45), and Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania – Bloomsburg (28).
University of Texas at Austin led in program growth at 227%.
Spring intensive courses saw a decline in numbers of programs, numbers of students, and average number of students per program. Average numbers have steadily fallen from 32.7 in 2018 to 12.5 today.
However, numbers for 2018 and 2019 were inflated by the pandemic. As more online options opened, particularly with large and respected institutions, many students chose to take spring intensive courses with them as in-person language courses were shuttered at other institutions. Thus, these two years represented extraordinary bumper crops of students and do not make for a good comparison for spring intensive courses today.
Spring intensives have tended to be offered more sporadically, making year-on-year comparisons difficult.
The five largest spring intensive programs for 2023 were Georgetown University (47), University of Arizona (27), University of Texas at Austin (16), Southern Methodist University (13), and Yale University (8).
Study Abroad
Study abroad is often a requirement of language or other international-focused majors such as diplomacy or international studies.
Gathering statistics for study abroad numbers, however, is somewhat tricky. Our respondents are professors within Russian departments and not all departments track which students are studying abroad, even when credit is being transferred. In these cases it is instead a function of a different university department, such as the study abroad department and/or registrar. Thus, not always will Russian departments have ready access to these statistics.
Furthermore, study abroad students don’t always study abroad for credit, instead simply seeking the experience of being abroad long-term to pursue their own personal or academic goals. Such students will rarely show up in university statistics.
Lastly, in a significant portion of cases, it appears that when Russian departments ask for these statistics from the relevant department within their university, they are often given university-wide numbers rather than students specifically studying Russian language abroad.
In short, because of multiple issues in gathering data, we have currently shuttered this aspect of the survey. A separate survey with different methodology and different contacts would be needed.
Heritage Speaker Programs
Heritage speakers of Russian – students who grew up with Russian spoken in their household, but who may lack formal language instruction and literacy in that language – also often take first and second year courses in university. However, many institutions offer specialized courses for them, as they have specialized learning needs.
Heritage programs have tended to report sporadically. Some, it seems, tend to disband in some years and reform in others, making year-on-year comparisons difficult and resulting in widely fluctuating numbers.
This year saw a record number of students reported. In some cases, this came from growth. The top five programs that reported year-on-year all grew between 22 and 110%
Another source of this overall rise is due to different programs reporting. Many programs that had low enrollment in 2022 did not report in 2023. Meanwhile, programs that did not report in 2022 did report this year with higher numbers than the programs that reported last year.
The five largest programs this year were SUNY – Stony Brook University (42), UCLA (21), University of Pennsylvania (19), The Ohio State University (19), and Carnegie Mellon University (18).
Majors and Graduates
Advanced Courses
Advanced courses are defined as any language-focused class that takes students beyond the second-year language curriculum. This year saw a small drop in programs reporting and total students reported – although average students per program actually increased slightly – from 13.6 to 13.7.
The top-five institutions offering such courses in 2023 include Brigham Young University (130), Georgetown University (60), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (55), Indiana University Bloomington (49), and University of British Columbia (37).
Graduates
Tracking graduates has become another problematic aspect of the survey. The Russian departments we poll have often had to ask another department for these figures, adding the same extra step that has made gathering study abroad statistics difficult. This has made reporting more sporadic, with some programs not reporting because they could not access the data. Some respondents have directly mentioned in the comments that their reported numbers are estimates pulled from memory.
Another problematic issue has been terminology. There has been some confusion as many colleges now offer not only majors and minors but also concentrations and certificates. We have tried to group these new classifications with minors.
In another terminology issue, this year we have additionally found that some programs are now renaming themselves as “Slavic Studies” or “East European Studies” or similar, distancing themselves from the Russian “brand.”
In short, the numbers for reported graduates fell precipitously, both in terms of overall numbers and in terms of the numbers reported per program. Majors, for instance, fell from an average of 10-11 per program, maintained from 2018-2022, to just 7.4 this year.
This drop may be due to difficulties in the respondents obtaining the data or by shifts in terminology affecting data collection. We will be reconsidering this section of the survey over the next year.
Partnerships and Virtual Courses
This year saw a marked increase in the percentage of institutions reporting that they expect to offer more programs in partnership with other institutions and a marked decrease in the percentage that report not offering them. When we initiated this question, our hypothesis was that COVID and decreasing enrollments might necessitate combined programs. This year’s data would seem to support that that might be happening, although it is still too early to tell.
Faculty
We began tracking faculty numbers in 2020.
We can now see what seems to be trends emerging – moving away from tenured staff and toward non-tenured staff.
Books
Material for first year Russian classes has rapidly diversified over the last nine years. In 2014, Golosa dominated with 55% market share while in 2023, it held only 24%. Mezhdu nami, a free and online coursebook has rapidly grown in market share to match Golosa‘s 24% this year. Beginner’s Russian and Troika have also seen substantial growth to claim 23% and 11% respectively this year.
Other texts in use in 2021 include Nachalo (5), I Love Russian (Liden and Denz) (2), Russian Full Circle (1), and Basic Russian, Book 1 (1).
Materials for second year Russian classes have also diversified, with Golosa (which now holds 21% market share) and V puti (17%) vying for first place. Live from Russia, which placed third last year, dropped out of the top seven this year in the face of strong growth by Etazhi, (which now holds 16% share), Mezhdu nami (12%) and Russian: From Novice to Intermediate (11%).
Other texts in use in 2023 for second year classes include Russian: From Intermediate to Advanced (5), Troika (4), Making Progress in Russian (3), Foundations of Russian (3), I Love Russian (Liden and Denz) (3), Beginner’s Russian (Kudyma) (2), Nachalo (1), Graded Russian Readers (1), Day Without Lying (1), and A2 (1).
In Memoriam and Endangered Programs
This year, a total of seven programs indicated that they expect to be closed within the next three years. This is a considerable increase – more than double the reporting seen in any other year.
In what might be a source of comfort to those who are currently endangered, 42% of programs who previously indicated closure concerns are today still reporting enrollments and have indicated that they no longer expect to be closed within the next years.
In determining programs that have been closed, we have record of 226 institutions having taught Russian at some point. Of those, this year 171 responded, and 55 did not. Of those 55, only 10 did not have mention on their websites of Russian currently being offered. An additional six program cancellations we have learned of through correspondence with professors who fomerly taught at programs that are still listed as offered but are not currently staffed.
Those closed programs are:
John Carroll University
Luther College (IA)
Northern Arizona University (still listed as offered but only as credit that can be tested out of).
Ohio University
Randolph-Macon College
Rice University
Riverside Community College (CA)
Rutgers-Newark
Siena College
University of California, Santa Cruz (technically still available by student petition)
University of Evansville
University of Houston (website still says the program is not available in 2021-2022)
University of Northwestern, St. Paul
University of Southern Indiana: Evansville
University of Southern Maine
Wittenberg University
Also, last year Ferrum College was listed in this section as “suspended.” Ferrum appears to have restarted their program as an online offering with an off-site teacher.
Other Slavic and Central Asian Languages
In 2022, we began tracking Ukrainian and Polish enrollments (asking initially for data from 2021 and 2022), as there was publicized circumstantial evidence that interest in these programs was rising as interest in Russian was falling. Below are our findings.
Polish Language Enrollments
Polish had by far the largest number of programs in the US of any Slavic language besides Russian.
Reported increases in enrollments have come from two sources.
First, programs reporting year-on-year experienced an average 15% increase. Of the 25 programs reporting from 2022, all 25 reported in 2023.
Second, nine additional programs reported – with 98 total enrollments. 44 of these came from two programs reporting for the first time. Only one program – at University of Kansas – was at a university that reported last year and did not, at that time, indicate the existence of a Polish program. The other six programs indicated that they had a Polish program last year, but had no students enrolled. Thus, it is difficult to say if the number of Polish programs is actually growing, or if they are simply more likely to report and/or be attended today.
Thus, we can say that interest in Polish is undeniably growing – although that growth is coming from a low base number and thus remains small. It is also important to note that 38% of the growth shown below came from two programs from universities that had not previously participated in the survey.
Ukrainian Language Enrollments
Interest in Ukrainian has grown significantly. However, overall enrollment remains small, behind that for Polish and well behind that for Russian.
Reported increases in enrollments come from a few major sources.
First, programs reporting year-on-year experienced an average 78% increase. Of the 19 programs reporting from 2022, 17 reported to the survey in 2023. Four programs reported growth of over 100% and only two programs reported decreases of any kind (one shrinking from 8 to 5 students, the other had reported 1 student in 2022 and reported that they were not offering Ukrainian in 2023).
Second, ten additional programs reported this year. Six are programs that reported to the survey last year and did not indicate the existence of a program at that time. These programs remain small, with just 28 total enrollments between them. The other four are new to the survey and larger, with 82 total enrollments.
Third, 30 enrollments this year came from sources that mentioned they were enrolled in special courses founded at the request of and with funding from the US military specifically for military personnel. We did not specifically ask about this – the information was volunteered in the comments section – there may be more military enrollments in addition to these.
Thus, of the 193 new enrollments reported this year, we can say that 42% came from programs new to the survey. 15% came from six programs that we can confidently say are newly founded. At least an additional 15% were enrolled in special military-related classes. The remaining 28% came from other program growth.
We asked respondents about other Slavic languages offered in 2019. We added Central Asian languages in 2022.
The most popular responses outside of Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian were Czech and BCS. Central Asian languages and other Slavic languages remain much smaller programs at our surveyed institutions.
Other languages not listed below, which all had 1 enrollment reported in 2023, are: Pashto, Mongolian, Macedonian, Kyrgyz, and Belarusian (all either Slavic or spoken by groups that can be considered indigenous to Central Asia).