Top Language Universities: Australia

In an ideal world we'd cover every country, but since this blog is in English we've been working through English-speaking countries. We've already shown you the top language universities in the UK, U.S. and Canada so now we're on to our final English-speaking country in the series, Australia.

Macquarie University

Macquarie in New South Wales has a good number of language courses. Aside from the usual suspects, you can also find Croatian studies, which is rare. There's also the opportunity to study Japanese and Chinese, which is fairly common across Australian universities.

Wollongong, New South Wales.

University of Wollongong

Aside from the fantastic name, the University of Wollongong also boasts some of the best tuition in Australia. Japanese, Mandarin and Indonesian feature alongside European languages to offer a good selection for prospective language students.

The University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia (UWA), though limited in its selection of languages offered, is one of Australia's best language universities. The university focuses on European language studies and if you're interested in French, German or Italian, UWA could be the place for you.

The University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales in Kensington, Sydney offers all the language courses you'd expect to get. The lack of more alternative courses is a little disappointing, however. That said, they are one of the top institutions in Australia and are clearly good at the languages they do offer.

Monash University

Monash University in Melbourne offers a good range of languages including Hebrew, Indonesian and Ukrainian. It's good to see institutions that don't just offer EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) and have branched out to lesser-known languages.
 

The main quad at the University of Sydney.

The University of Sydney

Though most people wrongly think that Sydney is the capital of Australia, the university there is one of the top institutions in the world and offers the widest range of language studies in Australia. As well as the usual selection of languages offered, you can also study Aramaic, Hebrew, Indonesian, Pali and Sanskrit. There's not many places in Australia that offer all of those.

The University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne in, you've guessed it, Melbourne, is highly recommended for language learning and covers all the popular language combinations such as the main European languages, French, Italian, German and Spanish as well as Russian and even Swedish!

Parliament House, Canberra.

Australian National University

The Australian National University (ANU) based in Canberra tops our list. It would have to since it's the national university. The university offers a huge range of language courses from classics such as Latin and Ancient Greek to modern languages from Europe and across Asia, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

If you're Australian or just want to study languages down under, then ANU is the place to be.

Top Language Universities: USA

One of the great places to learn languages that we mentioned recently was universities. What if you're thinking about learning languages or even studying them? There are so many fantastic institutions to expand your mind, grow as a person and eventually master a language that we couldn't possibly have them all in one post. To make things simple we've included the institutions with the best language programmes in the United States.

A 1902 college poster for Columbia
depicting a typical student.

Columbia University 

Originally founded by royal charter of King George II of Great Britain as King's College, Columbia University is the first Ivy League school to show up on the list. The Ivies are known to be some of the best in the United States, as well as the most difficult to get into. They're often thought of as being only for the rich and elite, but they actually do provide quite a bit of funding to lower-income students who can prove their intelligence. There's a large price tag for admission, but Columbia is located on the island of Manhattan, so it might be worth it to live in the centre of New York City which is teeming with diversity and places to explore. 

Stanford University 

If you're interested in studying in Silicon Valley, then Stanford is the place for you. Its full name is actually Leland Stanford Junior University, created in honour of the only son of a former California governor who died of typhoid at age 15. Besides having a great language programme, they're also known for being one of the top universities in the world for computer science studies, and their graduates include the founders of Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo! and Sun Microsystems.

The Wrigley Building in Chicago.

University of Chicago

This university is the only on our list located in the Midwest, the heart of the United States. Not only can you study modern languages in one of the largest cities in the U.S., but there are also courses available in extinct ancient languages such as Akkadian, used between the 29th and 8th centuries BC!

University of California, Berkeley (Cal)

California's best-rated university for languages is priced at about $20,000 for non-Californians, which comes to about half the price of the private universities on the East Coast. It's located along the San Francisco Bay, so you won't have to deal with the frigid winters you'd find in Chicago. You can also revel in its history as one of the centres of the hippie subculture movement in the mid-1960s. 

Princeton University

Though it doesn't rate quite as highly as Yale and Harvard, you can be assured of a high quality education in languages, which you might not expect to find in New Jersey. Its main university library is one of the largest in the world with nearly four million volumes, meaning there are plenty of foreign language books to assist in your studies.

An illustration of Yale and its chapel from 1786.

Yale University

This university hasn't been around as long as Yoda, who lived to 900 years, but is still the second best for modern languages in the U.S. and only fourth in the whole world (behind Oxford and Cambridge). It could also offer the right student the perfect start in Connecticut. If you're lucky, you might get invited into a secret society like Skull and Bones... two of its most famous former members are John Kerry and George W. Bush, who ran for president against each other in 2004. If we knew what they did at their meetings we'd tell you, but unfortunately it's a well-kept secret. 

Harvard University

Hardly surprising that one of the world's most famous educational institutions tops the list. It wouldn't be up there if the classes were terrible. The university was founded 140 years before the Declaration of Independence was written... would that make it a British university? The institution is famous the world over and with good reason.  If you're looking for language education, won't take anything but the best and you're made of money, then Harvard is the place to be. Nearly $40,000 per year in tuition alone could be too rich for some students' blood, though.

November 17: International Students' Day

There's no way to write a blog on languages and not say anything about students. Most of us have studied languages at some point, and we know a lot of our readers studied languages at university and beyond.

International Students' Day is actually an internationally recognised day for students, not necessarily in reference to international students. That said, many universities recognise it as an opportunity to celebrate multiculturalism, which is fine by us as the real origins are a little too dark for a Saturday.

If you're studying in a university such as this, then you're probably a student.

If we take the day as originally intended, we'll be celebrating students in general. We'd love for most people to have the opportunity to study at university, since many people we've spoken to recommend the experience and consider it the best part of their life. Most who had the opportunity to study abroad will cite it as their favourite part. That's where we're tying in the international aspect of today.

One of the most commonly known means of studying abroad, at least in Europe, is ERASMUS (EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students)... talk about a laboured acronym! We can safely say that most participants of ERASMUS loved their time abroad and the opportunity to see another culture and learn another language. It's a shame that the programme has seen better days. We hope that politicians will appreciate the value of the programme and continue to promote international exchange amongst students.

The bloke who inspired ERASMUS.

In honour of the day of students we'll be spending it sitting on beanbag chairs, smoking weed and not going to class! We'll also be ordering Domino's Pizza and watching L'Auberge Espagnole, a French-language film about a group of ERASMUS students. We highly recommend you watch it if you've ever been on ERASMUS or any other study abroad programme.