[EDLING:667] Guardian Unlimited: Big fall in language students

[kenro at STANFORD.EDU]

Ken Romeo spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

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Big fall in language students
Rebecca Smithers and Anna Bawden
Friday February 25 2005
The Guardian


The government's national languages strategy is seriously questioned in a damning report today, which reveals that there has been a "marked national decline" in the numbers of undergraduates studying languages.

Commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), it paints the bleakest outlook for language degrees yet, with ever declining numbers of students and an increasing concentration of courses in the hands of a few institutions.

According to the 90-page study from the University Council of Modern Languages, the number of language students at undergraduate level has fallen by 15% since 1998-9 at a time when overall numbers in higher education have been expanding.

The report warns that after doing everything possible to keep their departments open - by merging with others or cross-subsidising teaching - "the broad consensus was that universities were fast approaching the limits of what they could do themselves to maintain languages provision".

The most badly affected were Scandinavian languages (down 27%), Latin American languages (down 31%), Russian (down 27%) and Japanese (down 23%). While, statistically, French remains the most popular language, it still suffered a slump of 19% in four years. German also fared badly, losing 17% of its students. The numbers studying Italian fell 3%, while Spanish and Portuguese undergraduates posted small rises.

Just under half (46%) of all language undergraduates were studying at one of the Russell Group of universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge.

With 1,958 language undergraduates, Leeds University had the most students, followed by University College London (1,163) and Oxford (1,148). In contrast, just 22% of language undergraduates were studying at the former polytechnics.

The findings called into question the effectiveness of the national languages strategy, launched by Labour to encourage the take-up of languages from an early age.

The report's author, Hilary Footitt, wrote: "The shrinkage in language capacity at national and regional level in higher education, with institutional concentration of provision, and evidence of a narrow student class profile, represents a major challenge for the successful implementation of the languages strategy nationally and regionally."

This view was shared by universities. "The national languages strategy, as far as HE is concerned, is best described as warm words," one anonymous institution wrote. "There are neither carrots nor sticks in it for HE as it stands at present."

Unless it was made specifically relevant to higher education, institutions were sceptical that the strategy would have any effect on universities. There was widespread concern about the future of language provision and the impact of variable tuition fees on recruitment.

The report called on the government to formally designate certain languages as subjects of strategic importance. It called on the Higher Education Funding Council of England to introduce a notice period of one year before any language departments offering undergraduate degrees could be closed. It noted the adverse effect of the government's decision to make the study of languages at school optional after the age of 14.

The Universities UK umbrella group welcomed the report but said more needed to be done at primary and secondary school level.

The Liberal Democrats' education spokesman, Phil Willis, added: "This devastating report is a condemnation of the government's national languages strategy. The failure to introduce language teaching into primary schools, its near abandonment in all but a section of secondary schools and the marketisation of higher education have combined to place foreign languages in the 'endangered species' category in our universities."

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