Last summer, UO planned to cut all Swedish, Portuguese and Swahili classes following projections of a $25-30 million dollar deficit. While some classes remain, 100-level courses have been phased out and less commonly taught languages face uncertain futures.
The only Portuguese classes that are available this year are 200-level and above, with no new cohorts of students learning the language this fall.
Portuguese is spoken by about 265 million people, according to UNESCO. Beyond Portugal, it is the official language of Brazil and six African countries, including Angola.
“The Portuguese-speaking world is an important producer of literature, of political thought and connections around Africa and around Latin America,” Millar said. “I think that even if a language is spoken by fewer people, our students still have a right to know about those places, have a right to pursue those interests and have a right to a broad and diverse array of language offerings.”
Swedish is also being phased out this year. No 100-level courses are being offered, and 200-level courses are only being offered through an online hybrid CourseShare program via the University of Minnesota.
The slow decline of the Swedish program means students can’t fulfill Bachelor of Arts language requirements with Swedish, and it also puts the Scandinavian minor, which requires one year of Swedish. The German and Scandinavian studies major also has Swedish as an option to fulfill requirements.
“Now that we don’t teach the language it would be impossible to teach a class of, say, Swedish poetry because it would be impossible to teach without the language,” Michael Stern, associate professor of German and Scandinavian, said. “The very heart of the major which is learning to communicate, read and function in a target language, to understand a culture through the language it speaks and critically think of that culture in relation to your own, that connection is destroyed when we don’t teach the language.”
Stern said he is hosting two First Year Interest groups for German and Scandinavian studies to try to get students interested in Nordic language and culture, but he is “not sure” what the future will hold for students interested in learning Swedish for a minor, major or their BA requirement.
“They should either say it (Swedish) is gone, and be transparent, or keep funding it,” Stern said. “We are being dealt
a hand we can’t win with.”
According to DuckWeb and faculty familiar with the matter, UO also cut first-year Swahili language classes. No one in the Swahili language program was available for comment.
Amid program reductions, some faculty complained of a lack of “collaborative discussion” with university administration.
“I think there are creative ways to make sure that (class) options are still offered even with enrollment pressures and the financial needs of the university,” Millar said. “And my understanding is that many of those options just weren’t discussed or weren’t discussed openly.”
Despite the reductions, a recent $25 million gift from philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer helped UO’s language programs expand into new territories and add an International Relations major.
The major is currently “under development” and ongoing curriculum and administrative approvals, according to UO spokesperson Eric Howald.
Stern said he would rather have seen that money go to existing programs — like Swedish — within the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages.
“I feel the Schnitzer gift should have been used to buttress what exists and build out,” Stern said.
Several Swedish students, including Eliza Blank, agreed.
“They’re doing all these shiny things that people can see and the people that came to this school to pay thousands of dollars to take a very specific course are forgotten about,” Blank said.
In the same UO comment, Howald said “allocation decisions must honor the specific conditions outlined in the gift agreement,” but did not specify what those allocation decisions were
Languages not starting a new cohort of students might end up being incorporated into the Self Studies Languages Program at the Yamada center, according to Director of the Yamada Language Center Robert Elliott.
This “accessible” program offers students a chance to practice a less studied language with a native speaker for 1 credit per term, but does not often fulfill language requirements for graduation.
Harinder Khalsa, Yamada Language Center Self Study Language Program coordinator, said that although the program doesn’t fulfill requirements, it still provides a valuable educational experience.
“We all come together to develop those skills, so it is a program where everyone learns something from someone else all the time and I love that aspect of it,” Khalsa said. “It’s a very collective community-based, student-centered learning and teaching experience.”
Elliott said that the center offers linguistic diversity for lesser-taught languages that might face enrollment struggles.
“There have been students forced to take French or Spanish to fulfill their requirements, but more and more there is that recognition of linguistic diversity and that (other) languages count as languages,” Elliott said. “So I think that representation of people that have been traditionally left out or marginalized has a huge role in offering these diverse languages.”
That said, the long-term financial feasibility of the Self Study Language Program also remains similarly uncertain.
“The budget is getting squeezed everywhere and we are unsure of the number of languages we will be able to offer,” Elliott said.
Another way smaller language programs might be continued is through a Big Ten Academic Alliance hybrid online CourseShare program.
UO said when it comes to choosing whether or not to continue a course, “enrollment thresholds set by the university play a key role.”
The 100-level Portuguese courses enrolled 22 students last fall, 16 students last winter and 13 in the spring.
The 100-level Swedish courses enrolled 24 students last fall and winter, and 18 in the spring. According to Stern, 20 students were enrolled in this term’s Swedish 201 course before it was cut.
The Swahili language program has not met any of UO’s enrollment thresholds over the past two years.
