Bilingualism Belongs in College
We’ve seen the benefits in K–12. It’s time for higher education to catch up.
No matter where you walk in New York, you’ll hear and see tons of languages. My local café? The owner is Greek, the baristas speak Arabic and Spanish, and many customers chat in Serbian or Croatian. You’ll hear all of those languages in the time it takes to drink an espresso.
So I’m always struck by the contrast when I step onto my campus—not far from Central Park—where the only language I see is English. Half of our students are Hispanic, and many of them speak Spanish. You might hear it in the hallways, but you rarely see it. I say “rarely” because when I shared this observation with colleagues, it sparked a conversation—one that turned into action.
For decades, the U.S. has supported (at least to a certain extent) bilingual education at the elementary and middle school levels. Research shows that children in dual-language programs not only become bilingual—they often outperform their peers in English reading scores (I wrote about it recently here). It’s counterintuitive: by learning another language, they get better at English. But then again, the idea that the Earth is round was counterintuitive too.
So why aren’t we doing the same thing in college?
And I don’t mean just offering Spanish language classes (which I teach and love). I’m talking about teaching content courses—math, sociology, art, criminal justice—in languages other than English.
At my institution, most students come to study criminal justice. Being an FBI agent is high on many of their lists. And guess what? That’s a field where speaking another language—especially at an advanced level—is a professional asset.
My colleague, Dr. Rosemary Barberet, saw the need and decided to act. She began teaching her criminology research methods course in Spanish. We collaborated to adapt the content and discussed concerns: Would students understand the material? Would they constantly switch between English and Spanish?
A few semesters in, the results are promising. Students report learning the content as well as in English—and feeling more confident in their Spanish. But what’s even more powerful is what we suspect: that this kind of course is more than just a class. It’s a form of validation. It tells students: your language belongs here. You belong here.
And yet, one course isn’t enough. A program can’t rest on one professor’s shoulders. Recruitment is complicated. Spanish isn’t always socially recognized as valuable in academic or professional spaces—even though labor market data tells us it should be.
That’s where our research comes in.
P.S. Shout out to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where they’re leading the way in creating bilingual programs and developing a system to formally recognize students’ bilingualism in higher education. It can be done—and we’re learning from their example.
(Stay tuned for Part 2, where I share what we’ve learned so far from our own NSF-funded research project.)