The State of Languages in the U.S.: A Statistical Portrait
Distribution of Postsecondary Course Enrollments in Languages Other than English (Excluding American Sign Language), 2013
At the university level, Spanish is the most commonly studied world language, accounting for more than 51% of all student enrollments in 2013. Since the early 1990s, more students have studied Spanish than all other world languages combined.
Other European languages and American Sign Language account for most of the remaining student enrollments at the college level, but three of the fourteen “critical need” languages designated by the federal government are among the most frequently studied: Japanese, Chinese, and Russian.