22nd October 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
New data has emerged which shows that modern languages are declining in the UK at a critical rate. According to the Confederation of British Industry, the UK will fail to flourish in the international market without the language skills that are crucial to conducting business in the international arena. The CBI have called the poor linguistics skills of UK graduates a tax on UK trade, and have criticised the government for failing to prioritise languages for students. One of the alarming findings is the level of closures of language departments in UK Universities, a trend which will damage the prospects of UK graduates in the international industry.
The figures show that in 1998 93 universities in the UK offered specialist language degrees, but today the number has dropped to 56, a decline of 40%. The number of universities offering key European languages has declined rapidly, with the number of universities offering German degrees halving over the past decade, and the number offering French degrees declining by 40%. The key issue that has been highlighted by linguists is the fact that the decline in the study of languages in the UK has occurred at an alarming rate. Since the millennium, there have been very significant drops in the study of French, Spanish, Italian and German, which have caused large numbers of universities to shut their languages departments.
The decline has happened as fewer students are choosing to continue studying languages at A’Level, and universities are struggling to find enough students to take places on languages courses. The decline has particularly affected middle-ranking and newer universities who have been shutting departments in a bid to avoid losing money on unfilled places. In the last few years 11 universities have stopped offering languages degrees altogether, with many other universities now only offering languages combined with other subjects. The fact that university departments are closing will make it much harder to encourage students to get into languages at school if they have fewer prospects of being able to study languages at university. The government has introduced compulsory language lessons for primary school students, but UK industry will not see the benefits of that for many years.