West Virginia University’s board of governors voted to eliminate all of its world language degrees in September.
The university is facing a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall. The school says it’ll still offer courses in Spanish and Chinese, although students will not be able to major in those languages. The Modern Language Association reported last year that total enrollments in languages other than English dropped more than 15% nationwide between 2016 and 2020.
To talk about the state of world language programs in Arizona, The Show spoke with Jocelyn Raught, a past president of the Arizona Language Association. Raught has also taught Spanish in the Cave Creek Unified School District for more than 30 years.
The conversation began with what she’s seeing in K-12 schools, in terms of adding faculty and languages, or reducing those being taught.
