Italian language students in United States up 60% over eight years (1998 - 2006)

Not the most current numbers, but I noticed here that the number of students learning Italian in the United States has apparently risen by 60% in between 1998 and 2006, going from 49,000 to 78,000. Those numbers are from the Modern Language Association.

Hold on a second....

Okay, the Modern Language Association's site has some more recent numbers too. A search for Italian gives the following number for 2009:

80,752

So that's another 3.5% increase over three years. Certainly better than a decrease. With a population growth of 0.98%, that gives us a 2.96% population increase in three years, so Italian has just barely grown at a greater rate than the population itself.