Hebrew on Campus: Student Motivations and Expectations

Volume 9, No.3 Spring 1991 HEBREW ON CAMPUS: STUDENT MOTIVATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS Gilead Morahg Gilead Morahg is Professor of Hebrew literature and Chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves as Executive Vice President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew and as Associate Editor of Hebrew Studies. He is the author of numerous articles on contemporary Israeli fiction and on the teaching of Hebrew in American universities. 55 In 1989 the National Association of Professors of Hebrew identified 93 active modern Hebrew programs in American colleges and universities.1 Seventy-nine of these institutions responded to an NAPH survey of enrollment levels and enrollment trends. The responding institutions constitute 85% of those that offer modern Hebrew, and they include all of the major programs in the country. These institutions reported a total enrollment of 5,115 students in modern Hebrew courses at the beginning of the 1989-90 academic year. They also indicated that the rumors about the impending demise of Hebrew on American campuses have been greatly exaggerated. In addition to providing enrollment figures, each institution was asked to indicate the enrollment trends in its modern Hebrew program during the past five years. The results show increasing enrollments in 54% of the responding institutions and decreasing enrollments in only 13% of them. In 32% of the programs enrollments remained stable.2 So that while the total number of modern Hebrew learners on American campuses is not very large, the general enrollment trend appears to be positive. 1The number of colleges and universities that list modern Hebrew courses in their catalogues is considerably larger. But many of these institutions have not actually offered Hebrew instruction for many years. 219% of the respondents reported a significant increase in the number of Hebrew learners and 35% reported a slight increase. Only eleven programs (13%) had experienced a decrease in the number of Hebrew students. These consisted of six programs that reported a slight decrease in enrollment and five programs that reported a significant decrease. 56 SHOFAR The NAPH survey shows that only about half of the modern Hebrew programs extend beyond the second-year level: 99% of the 79 'responding programs offer first-year courses, 87% (69 institutions) offer second-year courses, 55% (43 institutions) offer third-year courses, and only 29% (24 institutions ) offer courses that are above the third-year level. This distribution is also reflected in the number of students at each level: in the first semester of the 1989-90 academic year there were 2,464 students in first-year Hebrew courses, 1,463 students in second-year Hebrew courses, 880 students in thirdyear Hebrew courses, and only 308 students beyond the third year. A progressive decrease in the number of learners at each level of instruction is an inevitable consequence of the American system of undergraduate education. But while decreasing enrollments at the more advanced levels of instruction are built into the system, the dimensions of these decreases are not. And, in the case of Hebrew, there is reason to wonder whether some of the very large declines that occur in the transition from level to level could be prevented, and whether the 8:1 ratio between beginning students and advanced students of Hebrew could be improved. This question arises primarily from the fact that there is no consistency in the size of the enrollment decreases, which vary, sometimes very dramatically, from institution to institution. The NAPH survey shows many instances of different levels of decline in similar institutions. It is possible, for example, to find four universities with identical foreign language requirements that begin with 32-35 first-year modern Hebrew students. At the beginning of the second-year course, one university has 23 students, the second has 20 students, the third has 12 students , and the fourth has only 8 modern Hebrew students. This represents an enormous variance in the rate of enrollment decline. Similarly, we find a number of programs that begin with 60-70 Hebrew students in the first-year courses and end up with only about 20 students in the second-year courses. This is the same number of second...