Lincoln Snyder

Lincoln Snyder

April 3, 2026

The Central New York Humanities Corridor and Colgate University hosted a conference on Innovative Approaches to Language Education on March 27-28, and I was honored to present my research on language revitalization efforts in Pennsylvania Dutch. The conference featured twin keynote speakers, Meg Malone (of ACTFL and Georgetown University) and Leanne Spino-Seijas of the University of Rhode Island, who both addressed the challenges that language education faces and what can be done to counter some daunting trends. (You can view those keynotes here and here). Like literacy itself, language education in American higher education is under pressure for a variety of reasons, and it was energizing to spend the conference with educators who are creative in addressing the problem. Here are some of my thoughts, in no particular order:

• The decline in language education (from its peak tertiary enrollment of 1,600,000 students a decade ago to less than 1,100,000 today) is another symptom of a general decline in literacy. Students are doing worse in learning their first language, so we shouldn’t be surprised that second languages are taking an even better hit. 
• Institutions that invest in language learning as a core competency have more language learners, and more programs for those language learners. Students will migrate to the programs “where the jobs are,” and programs like Leanne’s at the University of Rhode Island (which offer a host of double majors and career-focused immersion programs) are still seeing strong enrollments. 
• Eight of the Corridor’s universities have language resource centers which offer a variety of innovative programs, from the ability to take for-credit coursework in less-commonly-taught languages (bravo, Cory Duclos and Colgate) to tutoring and conversation hours in a variety of languages (thanks for the invite to Cornell’s Yiddish group, Angelika Kraemer!). As an aside, a number of language center leaders have a connection to the German language; any comments on the correlation would be highly speculative for now, but it is worth considering why. 
• German is really taking a beating. There are generational considerations, geopolitical changes, and rising interest in other languages (Asian languages, for example) – but it seems to me that both German and Germany have lost some of the “cool” factor that encouraged late-20th-century learners. There is no doubt that English’s continued growth as the lingua franca of continental Europe is having an impact, but we also need to consider what has to happen for learners to perceive the language as both useful and fun. Some universities are doing better than others with enrollment, so is appears that marketing matters.