Drops in enrollment concern faculty, experts

Every year, IU's lone Romanian studies professor, Christina Illias, must fight to keep funding for her program -- one of the most prominent in the country.\n"With every breath I have in myself, I will try to fight and keep it going," Illias said. "I think it's worth the battle."\nWith drastic cuts and declining interest in foreign language programs at IU and across the country, she has cause to be concerned. But with government demand for language specialists high, more might be at stake than Illias' job.\nLanguage is no longer the national priority it once was and should be, officials say, and IU's respected language programs are not immune to the drops in interest, enrollment and funding.\nLanguage enrollments of graduate and undergraduate students at the University have declined 25 percent in the last 10 years, said Randy Parker, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Since 1990, undergraduate majors in the foreign language and culture departments have declined by 51 percent, and enrollments in the courses that count for the COAS foreign language requirement have dropped 27 percent, Parker said.\nRoxana Ma Newman, assistant dean of the Office of International Programs, said the University has noticed the decline.\n"Even we, who pride ourselves on our rich language offerings, aren't producing enough language experts," Newman said.\nNewman speaks Dutch, French, Spanish and Hausa, an African language. She said she believes learning and speaking languages is a key part of a college education. That's why she said she is troubled by declines on a local and national level.\nNationally, college enrollment has gone from about 4 million students in 1960 to about 15 million in 1998, but enrollment in foreign language enrollment showed much smaller gains, according to the American Council on Education. In 1960, about 600,000 college students enrolled in language, and in 1998, 1.1 million students enrolled.\nIn 1960, the percentage of total higher education enrollment of foreign language classes was 16.1 percent. In 1998, that number dropped to 7.9 percent, according to the American Council on Education.\nHigh stakes\nThe problem posed by language-training shortages runs deeper than enrollment. The stakes are high.\n"It's a unilateral language disarmament," said David Ransel, director of IU's Russian and East European Institute. "We're at the mercy of what people tell us in their own language.\n"That's not a good position to be in if you have pretensions of being a world power and influencing people all over the globe."\nWhile experts in language study have shown concern about low numbers of language graduates before, an April 16 article in The New York Times revealed how the shortage has the potential to seriously damage national security. The article spurred water-cooler discussions at IU's Office of International Programs, Newman said.\nA backlog of material to be translated and the lack of language specialists with security clearance caused dangerous lapses in national security, the Times reported. Information about the World Trade Center bombing and nuclear tests in Pakistan and India was not gleaned from intelligence material until after the bombing and tests.\nRobert O. Slater, director of the National Security Education Program, told the Times the shortage of linguists is a grave problem.\nReasons for the decline\nUniversity officials blame the downward language trend on several factors. Many times, IU's regularly offered 40 to 50 languages have been threatened by University funding cuts and low enrollment.\nRansel, director of the REEI, said many universities have relaxed language requirements, and many students fulfill such requirements by taking a few classes in one of the three main language taught in high schools -- Spanish, French and German.\nRansel said the University of Illinois requires language in every school of the university, but IU continues to relax language requirements.\nThe diffusion of the English language into many countries has also become an issue. Officials cite English "arrogance" in many ways as leaving the United States at the mercy of what English speakers in other countries tell it.\n"English is swamping other major foreign languages," Newman said.\nIU's Russian and East European Institute -- brought into prominence by the Cold War and Russia's Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth -- has been affected by declining interest and fiscal cuts, Ransel said. The once forbidden land of Russia is now open. The romance worn away, Russia is less interesting to many Americans, Ransel said. Russia also lacks business opportunities, while in Eastern Europe --and especially Romania -- interest and business opportunities are peaking.\nIronically, Ransel said, the demand for language training during the Cold War was similar to today's demands. The break-up of the former Soviet Union and the resulting fragmentation of provinces and languages created a demand for people with language training, Ransel said.\nWhile the REEI doesn't offer languages, its area studies program offers languages through other departments.\nRansel said enrollments in such programs have typically stagnated or gone down for several reasons: The U.S. government reduced the number of foreign language and area studies grants it offers; University funding for instructors' salaries has gone down; students are choosing to go abroad rather than take languages locally; and battles with the University over logistics have crippled summer programs.\nRansel said IU has become more and more enrollment driven -- seeking to eliminate courses in which enrollment is low.\n"The University is being run more like a widget factory, processing bodies instead of maintaining necessary languages and courses," Ransel said.\nBut enrollment-driven budgeting is dictated by state budgeting, he said. IU receives about 25 percent of its operating budget from the state, a "pittance," Ransel said, forcing the University to operate like a private institution. The trend applies to colleges nationwide, he said.\nChristina Illias, who also teaches Latin and Classical Studies because University funding only covers a half-time Romanian professor, said the University recognizes quality in language programs and takes pride in them. But, she said, when there are financial problems, they start looking at departments and languages to cut.\n"You have to prove the worth (of your program) to the University and state with results," Illias said. "Once you've done away with (a program), it's not possible to bring it back. That's why I fought so hard to keep it afloat," Illias said.\nArmy training\nDespite reductions, IU's Russian and East European Institute is one of the oldest and most respected institutes in the country, said Major John Burbank, one of two Army foreign area specialists training in REEI area studies at IU. Area studies focus on a variety of cultural aspects of a country or region -- students are offered classes in humanities, literature, politics and history.\nThe Army pays for foreign area specialists' 18-month study after they learn a language or languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. Burbank took Russian at the Institute, although he said he was asked to take Arabic, one of the languages with the most chronic shortages.\nIU's REEI has a competitive admission process, but the Army sends the majority of its specialists to other institutions for one main reason: other institutions offer in-state tuition rates to enlisted people. Burbank said several schools, including Ohio State and Kansas, offer such discounted rates, but IU does not.\n"The army tries to save money where they can," said Burbank, who wants to work as an attache in Russia.\nRansel said the realization of language deficiencies should be good news for IU's programs, especially in graduate studies. The consciousness will likely focus attention on the area and open doors for increased funding, Ransel said.\n"I think that this awareness that there is a critical shortage … is going to help to turn things around, but there will be a lag," Ransel said.