What the Teaching of Tibetan Tells Us about UVa

by James A. Bacon

Let’s face it, as much as Americans love the Dalai Lama, there’s a probably a limited appetite in the United States for learning the Tibetan language. As long as the dude speaks English, that’s good enough for most of us. Not surprisingly, according to the Modern Language Association, only 109 students enrolled in Tibetan language courses in 2009 across the entire U.S.

Amazingly, though, a search of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition database it’s unbelievable what you can find online, isn’t it? — shows that 20 different U.S. universities teach Tibetan at one level or another. And the University of Virginia is one of them.

It turns out that UVa’s Tibet Center, which integrates the study of Tibetan language and religion, is a pretty big player in the world of Tibetan studies, enrolling between 15 and 25 students at any point. Still, given the fact that the program offers three different language courses (Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Tibetan), it’s pretty safe to assume that no more than a handful of students are enrolled per course.

Speaking from an economic perspective, that’s a major under-utilization of resources. One professor, only a handful of students. So, what’s a university to do? Cut the program? Not UVa. The answer is to expand the program by taking it online. Starting this fall, the University will offer Tibetan language courses to Duke University students in a new distance-learning venture “aimed at broadening the availability of low-visibility languages.” In return, UVa students will have the opportunity to enroll in a Duke class teaching Haitian Creole, according to a March 2013 article in Duke Today.

“Less commonly taught languages are no less important for being infrequently taught,” said Meredith Jung-En Woo, dean of UVa’s College of Arts & Sciences. “It is through new languages that we gain the entree to other cultures. Esoteric as some of these cultures may appear, in studying them we also learn new truths about our culture and ourselves.”

The partnership with Duke probably makes sense. It’s not clear from the article whether any money will change hands when one university’s students enroll in the other university’s courses. But, at a minimum, the arrangement increases the language options available to UVa students. Anyone who wants to study Haitian Creole will be able to do so via a Cisco TelePresence video conferencing system.

Through the window of this language partnership, we can see how the  University of Virginia intends to use online technology. The thrust is to increase the richness of the educational experience, not to cut costs or otherwise drive down the cost of a college education. That’s a wonderful thing if your ultimate goal is to create an elite university with a dazzling array of course offerings. It’s disappointing if your goal is to make high-quality education affordable for Virginia’s middle class.