ppl studying Chinese in the US - states with the highest number

[woliveri]

Carrying this from the "cpod draws the line" thread.

I'm just curious, out of all the ppl studying Chinese in the US, where are the concentrations? Which states have the higher concentrations of people learning Chinese.

I'm sure Florida would be close to the bottom of the list (top meaning more ppl) but what about other states?

Any guesses as to which state would have the highest number of students/people learning Chinese.

California?

[leosmith]

I think I saw the google stats for this site once. Roddy?

[wushijiao]

One would guess that California and New York would have the most, in terms of sheer number and the percentage because they have more people have Chinese decent living there (who want to study Chinese for heritage reasons) and those states tend to have more international business...etc. I'd also love to know where people are studying Chinese.

When I was in high school in Colorado (in the mid 90's) I didn't know of any high schools that offered Chinese. At the University of Colorado in 1998, there were only 10 people in the Chinese 101 class the one semester that i took it. That's probably all changed though.

[woliveri]

yeah, during the same time period in Florida the draw was Japanese and European languages.

No one was interested in Chinese.

[roddy]

US, August. Top three states in terms of number of visits are California, New York and Texas, in that order.

The empty states aren't actually empty, just too small to register. Bottom of the list is Wyoming, with only 53 visits during August.

California has a significant lead, over twice as many visits as New York. But it's also the most populous state (no?) so you need to factor that in. Also, this isn't 'joining' or 'posting' - they might just have been searching for a recipe, clicked on a Google result and then closed their browser in disappointment.

[The Elf Piper]

Ooh, Wisconsin did MUCH better than I expected. I thought we'd be one of the empty states.

[Luobot]

Florida is not doing so bad, either.

[leosmith]

Off topic, but I've never seen Michigan look like that. I guess they added the lakes.

[kudra]

this site has link to a pdf with the title Fall 2006 Enrollments in Chinese, by State (and Institution)

if you have time, compile the data and paste it into the site manyeyes so we can do collaborative data visualization.

Here's and example of a random graph with state data.

note: these data are from the Chinese Language Teachers Assoc. for universities. Doesn't include Chinese weekend schools, nor elementary/middle/high school enrollment. Supposedly there were 8000 public school students enrolled in Chinese in Chicago a couple years ago.

Edited September 12, 2008 at 09:09 PM by kudra

[woliveri]

Ha!

Florida had a 2 year Community College with a Chinese language class with a total of 22 students.

Pathetic

I'm looking to relocated to a state which has more of an interest in Chinese and a Chinese population but not expensive to live like California.

I think AZ is not a bad state in this regard.

[russmeier]

Looking at the 2006 data for Wisconsin, I can tell you that at least two more major Milwaukee area universities now have added Chinese to the foreign language offerings. The Milwaukee School of Engineering (a private school of engineering, nursing, technical communication and business with around 2300 students) offered the first year of Mandarin instruction last academic year (2007-2008 ). Marquette University (a 20000+ comprehensive university with liberal arts, science, engineering, law, dentistry, etc.) has listed Mandarin as offered during academic year 2008-2009.

For reference, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Milwaukee School of Engineering both use the Integrated Chinese series of textbooks.

Also for reference, I have not seen a university in Wisconsin that teaches Cantonese.

@leo: Yes, the map shown has included Lake Michigan as part of the shape of Michigan. Thus, you are seeing Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Lake Michigan, and Michigan's lower peninsula as one unit on the map.

Russ Meier

Milwaukee, WI

[The Elf Piper]

UW-Milwaukee's Continuing Education has Mandarin class at several levels, too. Classes start next week. I'm looking forward to it!

I wish I'd known MSE offers classes using the same textbooks. I ended up ordering mine through Amazon since UWM's online bookstore said they weren't in stock yet.

[Taibei]

Here are the figures for post-secondary enrollments in "Chinese," presented as a percentage of the U.S. national total:

• Northeast 27.4%
  
• Midwest 17.1%
  
• South Atlantic 14.1%
  
• South Central 5.6%
  
• Rocky Mountain 6.5%
  
• Pacific Coast 29.3%

Relatively speaking, the Pacific Coast has, unsurprisingly, the highest figures, including as a percentage of the population.

The figures are from the table on the final page of "Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2006," a report discussed here: US post-secondary enrollments in foreign languages and the position of Mandarin.

[kdavid]

this site has link to a pdf with the title Fall 2006 Enrollments in Chinese, by State (and Institution)

if you have time, compile the data and paste it into the site manyeyes so we can do collaborative data visualization.

Here's and example of a random graph with state data.

note: these data are from the Chinese Language Teachers Assoc. for universities. Doesn't include Chinese weekend schools, nor elementary/middle/high school enrollment. Supposedly there were 8000 public school students enrolled in Chinese in Chicago a couple years ago.

Great find!

Any idea on where we can find similar stats for other countries around the world?

[kudra]

Any idea on where we can find similar stats for other countries around the world?

I snooped around the Chinese Language Teachers Association (of America) to come up with that document. There might be similar professional associations in other countries, maybe just "Foreign Language Teachers Association".

Another way might be to get a list of the places around the globe that administer the HSK(I think I saw such a list on the HSK site, or in some of the HSK literature), and start digging there. For example, University of Michigan Ann Arbor administers the HSK. You could contact similar places and presumably they would know where their country's HSK test takers are from and have some idea about places in their specific country that offer classes.

[Taibei]

Any idea on where we can find similar stats for other countries around the world?

For schools in Britain offering Mandarin classes, see the appendix to Community Languages in Higher Education. But there's no breakdown there for numbers of students per school.

For a discussion of that report's stats on Mandarin, see UK degree-program enrollments in foreign languages.

[kudra]

here is a map of the US data from 2006 linked to in my previous post.