Language Requirements in North American Universities

Compiled by David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt+@pitt.edu) from input provided by Slavic languages faculty at the colleges and universities listed below.

No Requirement at All

University of Georgia: Currently four quarters for humanities students, three for science students. This is about to be reduced to one year for everyone, but admission requires two years of high-school study, which is automatically equated with one year of college (without testing), effectively eliminating the language requirement entirely. Many departments are responding by instituting language requirements as part of their majors.
State University of New York, Albany: No language requirement.
University of Oregon: No requirement for BS. Two-year requirement, with exemption by testing, for BA.
University of Toronto: No language requirement and no foreign culture requirement.
University of Rochester: No language requirement.

Requirement with Exemptions by Testing

Carlton College: Four trimesters (roughly between semesters and quarters in contact hours). Exemption only by placement test (achievement, AP, or departmental). Almost nobody places out of the requirement completely. The requirement is generally considered appropriate.
University of California, Los Angeles: One year of college language study. Exemption by examination. Automatic exemption for students who have completed Advanced Placement course.
Cornell University (Arts College): 12 credits (three or four semesters) in two languages or 12 credits plus a higher-level course in 1. Exemption by examination. Three years of high-school language study may be counted for the 12 credits, but an advanced course (or second language) is still required; many students with three years of language study need some remedial work to be able to succeed in the advanced course. Theoretically a student with three years each of two languages in high school would be exempted entirely, but this almost never happens. The faculty is generally satisfied with the requirement, which is viewed as a compromise.
Davidson College: Three semesters. Exemption by departmental placement tests.
University of Kentucky: Two years for Communications and Arts and Sciences; none for Business and Economics, Fine Arts, Engineering, Architecture, Agriculture. Very few students test out successfully. Communications allows a linguistics course instead of language as partial fulfillment of this requirement. Arts and Sciences will accept two semesters of one language plus three of another.
State University of New York, Buffale: Three semesters in the university, four semesters in Arts and Sciences. Exemption only by testing. The requirement was supposed to be "intermediate proficiency," but that has been replaced with a seat-time requirement without a conscious decision to do so.
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Short version: three semesters of college-level language study required, with exemption only by examination. Long version: Students who have had fewer than four years of a language in high school must complete through the third semester of that language at the university. Credit hours toward the graduation requirement are not awarded for the first semester. Students who enroll in a language other than their high school foreign language must complete through 3 semesters and are given credit for all three. Students who have had 4 years of high school foreign language and wish to continue in that language must enroll in a fourth-semester course and upon successful completion of that semester are given credit for the third semester, too. Students who have had more then 4 years of high school language and place above level 4 on the placement test have fulfilled their foreign language requirement and are awarded placement credit for the 3rd and 4th semesters. These are general college requirements; some departments require more foreign language study.
Oakland University: One semester university-wide (which may be satisfied by language or linguistics), one year for Arts and Sciences, two years of natural language for the honors college. Exemption by examination. The one-semester version is viewed by some as a travesty of a language requirement.
University of Oregon: Two years for BA, no requirement for BS. Exemption by standardized examination.
Ohio State University: Four quarters of language study. Exemption by examination, with automatic waiver for students who graduated from a non-English-speaking high school.
Pennsylvania State University: BA requires twelve credits (three semesters) of college-level language study. Exemption by examination. Students who have studied a language at any level in high school are not permitted to take a first-semester course in that language, regardless of their proficiency. The same is true of students who immigrated to the US after having attended school abroad for any period. No language requirement for BS.
University of Southern California: Three semesters in almost the entire university. Exemption by standardized (not departmental) placement test, although the Slavic department finds the test too easy to be effective.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: College of Liberal Arts: one year of college language study, with exemption only by testing. College of Sciences: the same, but with exemption also for students with two years of high-school language student with a grade of C or better.
Yale University: Two years. Exemption by departmental placement tests or AP. Almost nobody places out of Russian entirely. Automatic exemption for students who completed high school in a foreign country where all instruction is in a language other than English.
University of Washington: Three quarters in Arts and Sciences, none elsewhere in the university. Exemption only by examination, which few students with three years of high-school Russian can pass.
University of Wisconsin: Two-year requirement, which may be satisfied as four semesters of one language or two of one and three of another. Exemption by placement test; partial exemption for high-school language study, but all students have to take at least one language course in college.

Requirement with Automatic Exemption for High School Seat Time

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Four semesters. Automatic exemption for those who have completed four years of high-school language study.
University of Pittsburgh: Two semesters for all students in Arts and Sciences. Automatic exemption for those who have completed three years of high-school language study with a grade of C or better, or by testing for those who may have acquired language elsewhere. Out of the 2278 freshmen who entered the College of Arts and Sciences in 1997, 1594 (70%) were automatically exempted from language study.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: College of Liberal Arts: one year of college language study, with exemption only by testing. College of Sciences: the same, but with exemption also for students with two years of high-school language student with a grade of C or better.
Swarthmore College: One-year college-level requirement with exemptions for three years of high-school seat time or by examination. As a result of these rules, most students are not required to study foreign language. Some are discouraged from starting new languages by advisers, who argue that language study requires too many credits and too much time; students who heed this advice in their freshman year have trouble majoring, or even minoring, in foreign languages that they may decide to start later.

References

"The MLA Survey of Foreign Language Entrance and Degree Requirements, 1994-1995," by Richard Brod and Bettina J. Huber. DFL Bulletin 28, 1, Fall 1996, pp. 35-43.