Universities are blaming a “societal shift” for the axing of dozens of foreign language degrees and even entire departments, citing a lack of demand among students – but can years of study be easily replaced by AI or online translation tools?
Not so, according to Michael Lynas, the UK country director for the Duolingo language app, who argues there is no good substitute for the hard graft of learning a language as a way of seeing another country’s culture from the inside.
“Sometimes people say: ‘There’s translation apps now so why would you need to learn a language?’ But that’s not what young people in the UK are saying, they are actually spending more time learning languages on Duolingo than any other age group,” Lynas said.
“There’s good cultural reasons to learn languages – the UK is part of a global and interconnected world and there’s a need to reach out to other people in ways that translation tools can’t manage.
“I think young people and employers can see that being able to speak, even only a few words, and have a conversation in someone else’s language shows respect and makes those connections in a unique way.”
Lynas said he was surprised by his company’s data showing that not only were UK users more likely to be learning multiple languages than those in other countries, but that those aged under 22 were the most prolific users.
“It’s not what you’d expect. We know there is a problem with formal education and people selecting to study languages, but what it suggests to me is that it’s not because young people aren’t interested or don’t want to learn them,” Lynas said.
Duolingo was so concerned about the popularity of languages at degree level that it sponsored a recent report by the Higher Education Policy Institute on “the languages crisis” in universities.
Megan Bowler, the report’s author and a postgraduate student and lecturer at Oxford, said the recent announcement by Nottingham University that it may axe its language degrees was just the latest to be triggered by falling student demand, with no national strategy in place to protect such strategically important subjects.
“Graduate linguists are interdisciplinary thinkers who approach subtle nuances with a sophisticated awareness of societal and historical context,” Bowler said.
“These skills and intellectual values are now even more important in the age of AI – the closure of languages programmes may well be shortsighted.”
Over the past five years, nearly 50 centres of French, German, Italian and Iberian studies have closed or shrunk, while another wave of proposed closures is on the way, including the courses currently under threat at Nottingham and at Leicester University.
Hannah Sutcliffe, who graduated from Leicester with a degree in Spanish and French and has since cofounded Moonhub, a virtual reality training startup, said the languages, cultural awareness and critical thinking she developed had been vital to her career.
“They’ve allowed me to connect meaningfully with people from diverse backgrounds, approach business challenges with empathy and nuance, and navigate international opportunities with confidence and a strong linguistic ability,” Sutcliffe said.
“It would be deeply disappointing to see future students miss out on the same opportunity, not only to gain linguistic skills but to open doors to a wide range of careers.”
Nottingham said a “societal shift” was behind the fall in applications but that the pipeline of language students from England’s schools had been leaking for decades.
In the past 30 years the numbers taking A-level French have plummeted from close to 30,000 to below 10,000, and in German from 10,000 to about 2,000 each year.
Only Spanish has shown improvement, but that and small increases in other languages such as Chinese have not made up for the losses, as fewer GCSE students now continue on to study languages at A-level and then university.
When Leicester started offering degrees in Spanish in the 1990s, Dr Emma Staniland was one of the earliest students.
Staniland, who has since had a career spent lecturing in Spanish studies, said: “I was having a conversation with three of our final-year students the other day, and I was heartbroken to hear them say that the university’s threat to close our department has made them wonder whether what they’ve chosen to study was a mistake.
“Those who do come to university to study this subject are really driven by the passion for it, and the more impossible it becomes to make that kind of choice, the smaller the space for learning for the joy of it becomes … well, then, it will eventually only be for the elite. Modern language degrees will be the domain of the rich.”
Dr Maite Usoz de la Fuente, who also lectures in Spanish at Leicester University, said Brexit had also made studying languages less attractive, by cutting off what were potential career paths in Brussels, Paris and the rest of the EU.
“That possibility is now much harder. There’s a barrier now to just simply going abroad and working as a British national,” she said.
“The people who come to study foreign languages with us, they’re quite globally minded, and part of what they want is a degree that’s going to allow them to work internationally.”
