At Australia’s hugest university, Monash, approximately 9,000 Australians began undergraduate studies in 2023. Yet fewer than 20 of these made a choice to study Bahasa Indonesia – the language of the nation’s hugest neighbour. The startlingly low intake at the university is part of a worrying trend that has played out all over Australia at universities and schools. Of Australia’s more than 40 universities, just 12 now teach the language, down from 22 in 1992.
The number of students learning Bahasa Indonesia in high schools in New South Wales, the most populated state, dropped from 306 in 2002 to 90 in 2022, according to figures printed on The Conversation website. In the second most populated state, Victoria, the numbers dropped from 1,061 to 387 during the same period. Mr Zain Brown, 20, one of the few first-year undergraduates to study Bahasa Indonesia at Monash University in 2023, told that he got an interest in the language after living in Jakarta with his family when he was eight to 13 years old.
His parents, who work in the aid sector, both speak the language. Mr Brown, who is studying for an arts degree collaborated with a diploma of Indonesian language studies, said: “I think having a personal experience and a background with Indonesia made me wish to study it.” Questioned why he thought so few Australians made a choice to learn the language, he said: “A lot of Australians know Bali and basically not very much else about Indonesia.”