UC Santa Cruz has cut 58 of its language classes over the course of two academic years. In the 2024-25 academic year, UCSC offered 166 language classes. Starting this September, it will only offer 108.
That means about 35 percent of language options that were available in 2024 have been cut.
The cuts began with German and Persian classes last academic year. Now, Arabic and upper-division Mandarin classes are on the chopping block.
“Language courses are important at many levels of student belonging and student well-being,” said UCSC history professor and Center for the Middle East and North Africa director Muriam H. Davis. “[Students are] looking to connect with their identity, with their family, with their culture.”
“Those classes really become about more than just learning a language, right?” Davis continued.
First-year chemistry major April Mestas, in a testimonial to professor Davis, echoed this sentiment. As a STEM student, she spoke of the community that Mandarin language courses brought her during her first year.
“Mandarin classes are a space to step away from the pressure of rigorous coursework and enter a classroom where we can belong, laugh and connect through learning a new language together,” Mestas wrote. “Without that space, I would not have found the same sense of belonging on campus.”
Even though students expressed the fundamental community value in taking language classes, the “funding shortfall” is the reason for the proposed cuts, according to UCSC.
“Languages are often being taken by students who are not in the humanities division, but the instructional department is in humanities,” Davis said. “In many ways, humanities offers a service for all of campus and all divisions, but is getting punished because of a funding shortfall in the humanities.”
Numerous UCSC majors and minors have language-learning requirements in order to graduate. These majors include literature, linguistics, language studies, global and community health and global economics majors, as well as the Middle Eastern and North African Studies minor.
Additionally, students across disciplines opt to take language courses to prepare to study abroad or remain competitive in a globalized workforce.
Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics Chair, Professor Mark Amengual, explained that UCSC is in its third year of a new budgeting model — one that determines funding by division, not department. Since language studies majors fall under the Humanities Division alongside the writing program, which is required, the university decided to cut language lecturers over writing lecturers.
According to Davis, the Languages department is being “punished because it’s a lecturer driven curriculum.”
Dean of UCSC’s Humanities Division, Jasmine Alinder, responded to these concerns by citing the university’s mission statement to create “engaged global leaders,” stressing the university’s commitment to offering a “robust array of language courses.”
“UCSC is the only campus in the UC system without a campus-wide language requirement for undergraduate students,” she wrote in an email to City on a Hill Press. There are some programs here that do require some degree of language proficiency, but most of those requirements can be fulfilled by the language array we are teaching. We have tried to minimize any negative impacts to students.”
One alternative posed to in-person language courses is the “Global Language Network.” This UC-wide online program would allow any UC student to take an online language course hosted by a particular campus.
Davis attributed her distaste for online language courses to the disparity it could create between UC campuses.
“UC Los Angeles is teaching Bengali, UCLA students can take it in person. Everyone else has to take it online,” she said. “This creates an inequality between the flagship UCs, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the [other] UCs.”
Alexander Cruzado, a second-year politics, legal studies and Latin American and Latino studies triple major, has taken almost three quarters of Arabic to further connect to his Persian identity. He said he would stop learning Arabic should it move online for UCSC students.
“I think it just could be harder to learn it behind a screen. There won’t be that type of connection like inside a classroom when it’s in person,” Cruzado said. “It’s more interactive. You’re seeing how people make mistakes and how they learn from them. It’s harder to do that over Zoom or any other app online.”
Additionally, Jonas Araujo, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department, said the removal of language programs could undermine the reason he chose to study at UCSC.
“As a researcher of diaspora within African Muslim communities, knowing Arabic with all its nuances is essential; thus, having that program available was one of the reasons I came to our university to do my Ph.D.,” he wrote in a testimonial statement to professor Davis.
Undergraduate students echoed this sentiment, adding that taking away their ability to learn multiple languages would narrow their perspective on multiple levels.
“Language classes create opportunities for cultural understanding, career development, and connection between communities and schools around the world,” April Mestas said. “Cultural connection and global communication are an important part of how UCSC broadens its horizons and learns from other parts of the world.”
In the wake of endless international turmoil that permeates both classroom discussion and the wider UCSC community, students and faculty alike expressed concern over the timing of cuts to language offerings.
“I think it’s very specific for them to cut Arabic,” Cruzado said. “They’re trying to erase that type of community within the schools, and trying to highlight all their other languages. In my personal opinion, they’re doing it on purpose when it comes to cutting certain classes or curriculum [about] the Middle East.”
Collective concern across the student body has springboarded the campus into action. One group created an Instagram account, @savelanguages_uc, that is expected to launch this month. After sending a letter signed by 15 faculty members to campus administration in summer 2025, professors Muriam H. Davis and Mark Amengual, alongside their students, plan to keep collecting testimonials in order to further advocate for the language programs.
That being said, Davis emphasized her role as a supporter in the advocacy process, stressing UCSC students’ personal agency.
“Faculty are not here to tell students how to organize. You guys know how to do that really well,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is cut the bleeding, in a way. We’re trying to pause these cuts somehow. If we allow these programs to disappear, rebuilding them later will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.”
