Language and learning

Higher education in crisis

Easily the most disappointing news of the week was that a flagship state university, West Virginia University in Morgantown, is eliminating its foreign language department. The decline in study of foreign languages is not new nor is a university curtailing majors in a number of fields; the University of Kansas cut several language majors last year but did not wipe out an department. Both school leaderships made the decisions based on cost-cutting as fewer students selecting the languages as majors meant too much university investment for the return it brought.

Chinese is a language WVU is cutting.

Americans, like our British ‘cousins’, are notorious for being neither interested in foreign languages or willing to study much about the world around us. We don’t think we need learn about anyone else because ‘they invariably come to us for something’ apparently. I was profoundly lucky to live in foreign countries where other people did not speak English, requiring me to learn their language or be cut out of things entirely. I only succeeded well at Spanish because I cultivated my skills daily through living my life. I never mastered the other language as I should have, though my brother did a far better job.

Sure, my kids both studied Japanese (obviously the maternal pressure worked) and my son won a high school prize because he also did six years of Latin. Our granddaughter has done multiple years of Russian already; her brother is now talking about the same. My husband speaks a couple of foreign languages as do I but we know we are not average.

But it’s dangerous to assume, as the State Department used in a film (long predated video in 1970) for those of us going overseas that ‘Ninety-five percent of the world is foreigners!’ The operational concept I locked onto, even at that age was the assumption we are the ‘normal one’s while ‘foreigners’ are different. Perhaps I was too sensitive but I really think it a mind set that is problematic.

By the time I became course director for the Geostrategic Context at the National War College, our eight week admittedly glancing look at the world strategists operate within, the CIA Factbook reported we were merely 4% of the global population even if our economic and military roles were far greater. The point is that most of the world is not us nor do they think like us and continue to differ from us in some important ways.

Some of those differences are religious, some historic, some economic, many political, many cultural, and other measures. How many people spoke Pashtun in 1997? Languages help with nuance.

That doesn’t mean the world needs speak Chinese, contrary to Beijing’s assertions about being the Middle Kingdom between the Celestial Heavens and the mere mortals (we are the latter, of course). Worldometers.info says China is 17.72% of the global population while India, is actually the largest population globally with 17.76% of all folks on the planet. They both offer markets for sales, militaries for potential conflict or cooperation, and the like. So it might be worth learning about the cultural and languages of those places.

It’s the damage this move creates by legitimating closure of languages at a large state university that is so disappointing. Of course language is a tool to enhance understanding another society. Of course language is important for reading primary sources a government produces as its declarations of policies. Of course languages are vital for interpersonal conversation in business or even in a marriage.

But by closing a language department entirely, West Virginia is saying in some poignant ways they do not want to be part of that global discussion. The University will attract fewer faculty and students in fields tied to international commerce as the linkage between language and business studies, history (another endangered species, of course), sociology, and other disciplines are interrelated. If one can choose between some place offering these languages and Morgantown for a wholesome education, taking world languages off the table will deter some bright students from selecting that school because of the stigma it incurs.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, the United States historically provided undergraduate education as an opportunity for slightly more mature youth of 18 to explore a range of possible career paths after they have had longer to learn about the range of options. In nations where educational choices narrow at roughly age 16, the undergraduate experience focuses almost exclusively on the determined much earlier in life. This can eliminate ‘late bloomers’ who can be some of the most important contributors to their career paths. The two years between 16 and 18 are vital for intellectual and emotional maturation.

‘Liberal education’ as we have always referred to this approach sometimes forced, others times allowed students to choose studies previously unknown to them when their skills were less developed.

Additionally, liberal education emphasized the process of inquiry rather than a more rote learning to achieve a degree for a single field. Sadly, that field can prove disasterously inadequate or misjudged by students acting on the assumption that a degree in a certain field, such as pre-medicine or pre-law, would be the ticket towards a financially stable career. We are currently seeing the dissolution of the liberal education model because of financial threats to higher education.

I don’t accuse the leadership in Morgantown (or the other schools now likely to abandon their lightly subscribed language programs as well) of doing this in a cavalier manner; I have no doubt the university knows it will face pain such as belittling about being the ‘hicks’ of West Birginia.

Universities in the United States are in crisis as the end of COVID made clear. The model of so many schools seeking to be major research havens rather than to address the educational needs of the population is a stark choice that no academic wants to make. Academics with decades pursuing their specialties in narrow fields of scholarship are the ones who run these institutions; it’s not space aliens. But higher education now focuses on research with far less attention to the overall expansion of intellectual capability or basic knowledge. Faculty incentives overwhelmingly focus on peer appreciation of their work and the self-gratification that instills. The research side is how one achieves tenure rather than quality teaching. Some folks darkly see an inverse relationship between teaching ability and research production, although that overstates the problem a bit.

This is also expansive. Universities must free up their faculty from teaching to do research; it is a zero sum game.

I know faculty generally dislike teaching basic courses as it requires time away from their own specialties. But we are producing students who don’t know enough to know they do’t know. Yes, graduate students who increasingly teach the introductory material in conjunction with the ever-exploding cadre of academic slaves, better known as adjunct faculty, mean there is not always sufficient attention to the quality of what the customers (remember the students?) learn.

Why is there an imbalance in jobs for the growing number of doctoral holders? Because research is premised on being part of a department generally including teaching graduate students. Enticing grad students has traditionally been part of both freeing faculty and creating the next generation of scholars. Liberating faculty from the classroom allegedly occurs once the graduate students are able to teach but we are modeling not teaching but research.

Additionally we are producing thousands of newly minted doctoral students annually with no chance of achieving permanent employment in their specialities. An unemployed PhD who spent a decade pursuing a doctorate is most likely woefully in debt, thus desperate for that slim hope of proving himself for one of the elusive jobs that come open annually so she takes an adjunct position if offered. That individual, if lucky, likely shuttles between multiple colleges—sometimes at some distance—to scrape together a living wage; they are worked to the bone in the courses senior faculty don’t want to teach. I know someone who taught for twenty years at George Mason University in northern Virginia where he had more students per semester in his multiple courses than the entire National War College (a federal dedicated institution) student body. He did that fall, spring, and summer for about 30% of the salary a tenured full faculty member earned for a 1:1 (a course in the fall and one in the spring) load. This guy was awed to have this chance.

Universities require better expensive facilities and laboratories to attract better researchers to attract more grant money to continue the cycle. When I taught at a Midwestern Catholic university in the 1980s and 1990s, the president started every single meeting saying he expected any and all faculty who were traveling to be spending each day getting outside funding. He made lauded the medical school because they were the regional ‘heart’ school so the heart surgeries were crucial for keeping the remainder of the university afloat. The undergraduates lured to spend massive amounts to get a good liberal education were a decided after-thought for the majority of people I taught with, since teaching undergraduates was not where the incentives were. Put another way, teaching was the lowest item in the priority list for what faculty expectations involved.

Of course universities must operate with costs in mind. I am not silly enough to say we should keep every single school teaching every single subject without enrollments; that would be daft. But as we bemoan students’ poor writing and communications skills, who do we think is working with them? At a time we worry about our ability to promote U.S. trade abroad, what do we know about the places we seek to engage? As we seek diversity in many fields, who is providing the little extra assistance opening the minds of non-traditional students to study and excel in those areas?

Yes, higher education is in crisis. I personally believe we need diverse educational opportunities across high Ed, to include a small number of huge research schools and a number of traditional ‘Great Books’ curricula such a s St. John’s in Annapolis. I would never be a Johnnie because they are too focused on the western classics for my tastes but just this week I read that their financial situation is quite stable as potential students value the personal attention and depth of study offered.

Sadly all of education in the United States seems under threat as we are asking schools at each level to be too many things for kids whether at kindergarten where we expect the frazzled teachers to introduce basic socialisation or in high schools where math and science achievement is dangerously low. This is not a problem that is going away. We have accrediting institutions to assure successes but we are still facing an uphill struggle to return education to a societal role as a desirable, successful experience which will help the country as a whole rather than individual students.

I know my views will infuriate many of you but I think the evidence is clear. We need rethink higher ed.

Once Morgantown eliminates their world languages (or other programs), they are likely never to return. That is an action with consequences. I simply ask that we also ask what the objectives are for any university and whether universities are ends or means towards something for the society as a whole.FIN

Nick Anderson, ‘WVU’s plan to cut foreign languagues, other programs draws disbelief’ washingtonpost.com, 18 August 2023, retrieved at https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/18/west-virginia-university-academic-cuts/

Josh Moody, ‘University of Kansas Looks to Cut 42 Academic Programs,’ InsideHighered.com, 17 February 2022, retrieved at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/02/18/university-kansas-plans-cut-42-academic-programs

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/