Best Colleges for Foreign Language

The push for Americans to learn foreign language began as the Cold War reached its crescendo in the 1960s. Soon after, over two-thirds of higher education institutions required students to learn a foreign language as part of a bachelor’s degree; today that number has fallen to just 50%. The Cold War may have crumbled with the Berlin Wall, but we now reside in a globalized marketplace where knowledge, trade, and investments know no borders. For anyone entering fields such as business, finance, information technology, software development, government, law enforcement, or healthcare, fluency in a foreign language has never been more advantageous and our Best Colleges for Foreign Languages can serve as the starting point to finding the best university for you. If you need more motivation, the ability to converse with international clients in their native tongue is of great value; bilingual college grads entering the private sector right now can expect a 10-15% pay increase right out of school.

Click the links below for more information about each college’s foreign language program. Click here to read our methodology.

Brigham Young University

Brown University

College of the Holy Cross

Columbia University

Cornell University

Dartmouth College

Dickinson College

Duke University

Georgetown University

Grinnell College

Hamilton College

Harvard University

Indiana University

Macalester College

Middlebury College

New York University

Northwestern University

Princeton University

Smith College

Stanford University

United States Military Academy

United States Naval Academy

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Chicago

University of Michigan

University of Pennsylvania

University of Virginia

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Vanderbilt University

Washington University

Yale University