Sustainably designing language degrees

The potential closure of language degrees at the University of Aberdeen has been met with understandable outrage across the language education sector.

We share this concern, and about the geographic “cold spots” that closures create. We also share the view that the graduates of language degrees contribute important knowledge and skills to the economy and society.

However, the reported fall in student numbers at Aberdeen – the equivalent of 62 full time first year students in 2021 to only 27 in 2023 – makes it likely that the cost of teaching and supporting students outstrips the income they contribute.

The proposed solutions to this financial unsustainability – closing all or most of the language degree programmes – are based on the assumptions that fewer and fewer young people want to study languages and that languages are expensive to run.

We disagree. We believe it is possible to design language programmes that are attractive to students and financially sustainable.

Languages in context

Universities would not close language degrees if demand was healthy. But only one in two young people take a language GCSE, and entries to French, German and Spanish A level have fallen again by more than 10% this year. Much can be explained by attitudes towards languages in the UK, including the belief that speaking English is “enough”; formal language learning doesn’t work; technology makes language learning redundant; and that the version of a language used by its “native” speakers is the only legitimate variety. These attitudes also lead to the undervaluing of language skills by UK employers.

On the other hand, there is “unmistakable enthusiasm for language learning” outside of formal settings, as can be seen by the popularity of apps such as Duolingo – enthusiasm that could attract students to study languages at universities if the right programmes were available.

Universities would not close language degrees if they were financially sustainable. But it is common to offer a large number of joint honours programmes and for only a small number of students to choose each programme. For example, at the University of Aberdeen, French is offered with business, English, geography, history, law, linguistics, politics, psychology and others – a pattern seen across the UK.

Clashes and cold spots

Offering multiple small programmes causes administrative complexity. The timetabling challenge is immense – no language module can clash with any programme where joint honours is offered. Ensuring that students are taking the correct modules is not straightforward: students might erroneously be offered modules that are not running and not offered modules that are, or they might discover mid-way through the year that they have insufficient credits. And enormous resource is required to maintain programme documentation and online course descriptions.

Many universities – most recently Aston, Coventry, Huddersfield, Hull and Sunderland – have closed languages. Becky’s research shows that most English universities with below average entry tariffs – widening participation (WP) universities – now do not offer language degrees. And that there are large areas of the north, east and southwest of England further than 60 km away from a below average tariff university offering degree-level languages programmes.

This is a social justice issue: students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to commute and are therefore excluded from studying languages. And the situation at the University of Aberdeen shows that it is not only lower tariff universities where languages are at risk.

Single or joint

York St John University, where Rachel is head of the School of Education, Language and Psychology, and Becky was previously subject director for languages and TESOL, is a WP university with 40 per cent of students from the least privileged socioeconomic backgrounds (POLAR quintiles 1 and 2).

Unlike most WP universities, language degrees are now thriving. In a forthcoming chapter for the collection Innovation in language learning and teaching: the case of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, we describe the curriculum transformation that led to this success. We summarise our key message here, in the hope that it may be of use to others working in WP universities or where languages are unsustainable in their current form.

York St John previously offered degrees in British Sign Language (BSL), French, German, Japanese and Spanish in combination with business, education, English and TESOL. However, languages were identified as being unsustainable and their future hung in the balance. After analysing programme and module enrolment data to understand students’ needs and preferences, we decided to close French, German and Spanish, continue to offer BSL and Japanese, and launch Korean. By offering languages not taught in schools, we reached students who had been self-studying – thus tapping into the “unmistakable enthusiasm” for language learning described above.

We also closed all joint honours programmes, replacing them with an innovative programme design that looks like joint honours, but is administered as single honours within one subject area. We replaced 37 programmes with five, for example BA BSL, Deaf Studies and Linguistics; BA Japanese, Intercultural Communication and Linguistics; and BA Korean, TESOL and Linguistics.

This saved languages from closure. The number of first year students on language programmes tripled – from 52 in 2017 to 165 in 2021 – with the income from student fees increasing even more because it was no longer split across two subject areas.

The new programmes are sustainable, with a vastly reduced administrative burden: the language modules are straightforward to timetable, no longer impacting on other programmes in the university; the module diets are simple to generate; and far less resource is involved in marketing and quality assurance.

Navigating between competing demands

The University Council of Modern Languages (now University Council For Languages) and British Academy reported that joint honours programmes have not suffered the same decline as other language programmes. They recommend that universities should expand “the range of courses in combination with other […] subjects.”

But this doesn’t take into account the impact of having multiple small programmes: the drain on resource in terms of timetabling, module diets, marketing, and quality assurance, and the impact of errors on students. Our innovative solution to these competing demands is to design programmes that look like joint honours from the students’ perspective but are administered as single honours, within one subject area.

The fall in students applying to study languages at university, combined with the administrative complexity of offering multiple joint honours programmes, is inevitably leading to programme closures. Arguments about the value of language degrees to society cannot get around the reality that the income is insufficient to cover costs in many departments, especially in WP universities.

We present an alternative design – one or two attractive and sustainable tailor-made programmes per language. In our case, this resulted in increased recruitment and saved languages as a subject area.