<p>Does anyone know, what is the smallest college (lowest number of students) in the U.S. that offers over 2 years of Arabic?</p>
<p>Or, if every college that offers over 2 years of Arabic is enormous, what is the smallest college in the U.S. that offers at least 2 years of Arabic, that is, reliably offers 2 full years of Arabic, with a full second year offered every year?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>(Is there someplace that I could have looked this up?)</p>
<p>You might check into whether there are any small colleges which have consortium/cross-registration deals with nearby big colleges that offer Arabic. </p>
<p>Also, I believe Bard and Dartmouth both offer Arabic as a major.</p>
<p>That's going to be a very difficult thing to figure out. You can easily find schools that offer majors in Arabic, but finding ones that offer 2 years + but don't have majors will be very hard.</p>
<p>You can find a list of schools offering the major at princetonreview.com and, who knows, maybe on this site as well. But the list is incomplete. For instance, the University of Chicago is supposed to be quite strong at this, but Arabic comes under Near Eastern Civilization or somesuch.</p>
<p>JJG, Williams, at 2000+ students, offers two full years of Arabic. It's a relatively new department so it's impossible to judge how consistent the course offerings will be but the initial commitment is definitely there.</p>
<p>I would second the suggestion of looking at consortiums -- like the one the Amherst belongs to and the Claremont-McKenna group.</p>
<p>I think Denison has Arabic.....I remember because I was helping a friend research colleges w/strong Foreign Language programs and Denison was pretty much the first (only?) LAC I've ever heard of that offered Arabic.</p>
<p>Check Middlebury... they have an Arabic minor, I think it's three years (plus they have summer courses in Arabic).</p>
<p>At Wake we have 4-5 Arabic classes as well as a summer program in Morocco. However, we don't offer a minor.</p>
<p>Denison:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.denison.edu/catalogs/ARAB.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.denison.edu/catalogs/ARAB.html</a></p>
<p>to confirm prior posts, Middlebury (~2400) offers Arabic as a minor, so they have a number of classes, plus a summer program:
<a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/arabic/%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/arabic/</a></p>
<p>and appears that Denison (~2000) offers the Ababic minor also (or at least a bunch of courses, but may not officially be a minor), but with fewer courses than Middlebury:
<a href="http://denison.edu/catalogs/ARAB.html%5B/url%5D">http://denison.edu/catalogs/ARAB.html</a></p>
<p>I checked a few other small schools:
Swarthmore (~1500)...looks new, perhaps 2 years of courses: <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/mll/arabic/%5B/url%5D">http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/mll/arabic/</a>
Amherst (~1600)....2 years of courses: <a href="http://www.amherst.edu/%7Easian/arabiccourses.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.amherst.edu/~asian/arabiccourses.html</a></p>
<p>vast majority of small LACs do NOT offer Arabic. Appears that the "elite" LACs, presumably with more money to hire profs in expanding academic areas like Arabic....plus Denison....are leading the pack in establishing Arabic as a course of study.</p>
<p>Brandeis has about 3,500 undergrad, give or take, but they have a <em>great</em> arabic and middle eastern studies department.</p>
<p>Looking at Denison's web site, Denison appears to reliably offer a year and a half of Arabic (three semesters), with the possiblity of "special topics" courses.</p>
<p>It looks like the answer to the first question "Does anyone know, what is the smallest college (lowest number of students) in the U.S. that offers over 2 years of Arabic?" is "Brandeis" (at about 3500 students).</p>
<p>It looks like the answer to the second question ("at least 2 years") is "Swarthmore" (at about 1500 students).</p>
<p>JJG- perhaps I skimmed the materials too quickly, but Middlebury's Arabic offerings seemed a bit more robust than the other LACs (I haven't looked at Brandeis). I was guessing that Middlebury (2400 students) offered over 2 yrs, perhaps 3.</p>
<p>I believe you can do an Arabic major at Swarthmore (and hence at Haverford and Bryn Mawr). These are all very small colleges.</p>
<p>Middlebury offers 9 courses in Arabic followed by an independent project course at the end. The most widely used texts in the US for studying Arabic were developed at Middlebury and their professors are consistently excellent.</p>
<p>The summer programs at Middlebury are excellent as well and there you can gain more fluency in a short amount of time than you would ever have thought possible.</p>