Dear Dominik,
My personal impression concerning Sanskrit (and all the other subjects Germans would call 'breadless') at university, at least in Anglophone countries, is that, with the exorbitant fees students are paying, they and their parents want something in return. Spending a life paying off student debt is no fun, and so the understandable tendency would be to take/major in a subject that offers a slightly clearer path towards gainful employment. Taking an online Sanskrit course that costs around $300 is a much smaller commitment, and almost all my Yogic Studies students are adults. (If you take all three terms of my intro course for $800, you get the same from me that my Cornell and Munich students in Intro Sanskrit got/are currently getting, and with much better tech support, a TA and thriving online communities. But Yogic Studies, unlike universities, are the ones considered by some as being ‘for profit’:-)…)
Another factor likely is that most students in Europe or North America don't really know about subjects that they don't encounter in secondary school (I at least first heard the name 'Sanskrit' mentioned when I was already a Classics undergrad). Combine that with the attitude (which I believe is stronger where I currently am than in e.g. the US) that the task of a department of Indology, Indo-European etc is to educate the next generation of Indologists, Indo-Europeanists etc., and you find an environment that could be made more inviting for students who (wisely!) want to first dip their toe into this new (to them) field before they possibly commit to it.
There are many other factors as well, of course. Some things we can do that I believe would be productive:
- Networking as much as we can within our institutions, having our courses recognized as elements in as many adjacent departments as possible. We have *so much* to offer after all.
- Becoming better public communicators and advocates of our work. The idea of a public intellectual is accepted in some countries, praised in few, often looked down on in others. Such communication is difficult and needs to be learned, but it *can* be learned. This applies especially to all our specialised research that does at first sight not pass an interested bystander's 'so what?' test.
- Give available positions not just to those who excel most at research, but also to those who actually care about and are good at teaching. (I know this is difficult because there is a limited number of posts available, and universities are the only places where research like ours can be carried out.) Don't give intro language teaching to inexperienced TAs. Intro teaching is *much* more challenging than, say, an intermediate reading class.
What would also be helpful, but isn’t in our control: make education affordable (again, this doesn’t apply to all countries, but definitely most Anglophone ones). Have universities that are fully about education rather than accreditation, that are not the playthings of politicians, that are not about having a degree from the Most Excellent University of X. (My BA certificate from Cambridge states the day on which I received it, written out in words (!), but does not mention subject or grade. It took me a while to understand the rationale behind this.)
Ultimately, I hope that what is going to happen in future years is that the various alt-acc institutions, which arise because there are important vacuums to be filled, can be tied in more with universities. That means more job opportunities for academics, and for universities the possibility to focus on their individual strengths, given who is there, rather than having to offer the full breadth of the field. For smaller colleges to be able to offer full degree courses specific to South Asia, or maybe even ‘classical’ Indology. Imagine being able to have specific offerings that you are renowned for, but if you don't have, say, someone focussing on yoga, not a problem, because you can offer world-class online courses with none other than Jim Mallinson or Phillip Maas (and many others) through a place like Yogic Studies. (And now I will stop blowing the YS horn - I promise they're not paying me to write this:-).)
We all know that courses in situ, with face-to-face contact, remain an absolutely necessary framework; but maybe we can have online offerings within that framework, at least when they are well-organised from the start and not put on as an afterthought (as they sometimes have been by universities in the past).
Public interest in India (past and present) is enormous, far beyond the ‘Yoga practitioner who wants to know what the names of āsanas mean’ stereotype. If we can get many interested in taking a few courses, and then a few in pursuing further studies as part of official degree courses, I think that would be great for our field. It would also secure us much broader support whenever someone decides we are an easy subject to cut.
My two (well, maybe five) Euro cents.
All my best,
Antonia