Upon closer reading of this, it appears that the College of Arts and Sciences does not require four semesters of a foreign language for every major (although it is still required for some A&S majors, and “recommended” for all).
This is a change from when I went there: one of my guitar students switched from biology to an Ag Sciences major because of the language requirement.
“WVU: When All Else Fails, Lower Your Standards”
FWIW, as noted upthread, foreign languages seems to be an inexpensive, valuable set of courses to offer. Hell, you could hire moonlighting high school teachers as adjuncts (like other departments have long been doing).
Methinks cronyism is involved. And if they hadn’t had humanities requirements when I went to WVU, the first word in that last sentence would have been a lot less classy.
A university is a business and has the right to discontinue courses with low enrolment or of little interest.
A university is a place of learning and expected to foster academic knowledge and research and transmit these benefits to students.
Languages are useful. In theory they use unique parts of the brain, reducing things like Alzheimer’s later on. In practice, they can much improve travel and cultural appreciation and have tangible benefits in business and relationships.
Accordingly, having high school students learn a second language is a good idea. It is a good way to learn more about English too. At this level, the costs of language education are basically the teacher and sunk costs like a room. Is university that different?
No university teaches every language. It makes sense to emphasize ones more commonly used and which people want to learn.
Universities are not the best place to learn active languages. Travel is. Resources to better learn fundamentals are commonplace. Universities have experienced teachers, language labs, more research and enough volume and interest to offer conversation classes so still may have some modest advantages. But it is hard to believe linguistics is a major cost for universities.
The broader theme of humanities differs. Certainly they enrich any other degree. STEM may be more applicable to an average student thinking mainly of employment options. Certainly general humanities are very useful and important. Subspecialization might depend on a universities mission, focus, student body and what they study, reputation, research and marketing. “A well rounded education” still has value but individual time and resources are limited. Philosophy may be less relevant to students now then previously, science more so.
I can’t comment on this specific university. Administration should be a smaller component of university life and standards are important. But so is exposure to a broad variety of ideas even for students majoring in science. Universities must offer a reasonably full education, including ethics.
If every university follows that logic, it will become pretty hard to find good courses in Hurrian, Puyuma, Pali, and Nga’ka. At least, not without travelling a lot farther afield than West Virginia.
If it is true every language should be studied and taught, it does not necessarily follow every individual university can or should do this. One hopes the domestic community of universities includes everything important.
Our high school offered three and a half languages. Other local schools had slightly different ones. Should they have offered ten? Probably not. Universities should offer more. It’s not my place or expertise to say exactly which ones. But if more students wish to study Swahili, Amharic or Yoruba than Oromo or Igbo, so be it. Different universities can fill the gaps. And university is not the optimal place to learn any language, even in West Virginia.
Universities are funny beasts. I cannot teach the languages I specialize in, because there is no mechanism to do so. Students at my university who might be interested are out of luck, even though I’d happily take on extra courses for no extra pay.
Huh, is there no way perhaps to announce it as a seminar or something?
A colleague (not a linguist or philologist at all, but with at least a personal interest in classical literature) told me that a friend of his somehow taught himself Ugaritic [I am sure he did not do it by travelling and talking to native speakers…] According to my colleague, he became proficient enough, and the circle of people fluent in that language is small enough, that he came to be considered an expert in Ugaritic literature. Reminds me of Michael Ventris (who deciphered Linear B), who was an architect.
At any rate, I do not think universities should actively discourage that sort of thing (it is clear it is not going to rate an entire institute at every small school).
It’s necessary to be careful to not assume that universities have always taught the same subjects that you remember then as teaching when you were younger, just as it’s necessary to remember that no type of institution was always the same as they were when you were younger. If you do that, you find yourself claiming that things were better once in your earliest memories and have simply gotten worse. Everything changes over time, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Universities have been around since the Middle Ages. They have slowly and consistently changed since then. The closest I can get to a history of universities that I can link to is this Wikipedia article:
Unfortunately, really understanding the history of universities requires much more detail than is possible in a link or even in a single SDMB thread. It requires as much detail as in (at least) a complete book. That is the problem I have many times in SDMB threads. At some point it becomes clear that we’re never going to say enough to sufficiently explain an issue.
I did computer science at a mainly STEM university back in the early 80’s. Taking any language course would not have counted towards my required humanities credits. The first high school I went to was too small/poor to offer any language classes so I’ve completely missed out on learning a language.
Part of the problem is that the West Virginia government (I don’t know exactly which part of it) doesn’t want to share (or hasn’t even thought about sharing) a university which has sufficient students in foreign languages and linguistics to have a department (or departments) doing that. You’re now going to say, “But states don’t share universities.” Yes, they do in some cases. There are only 32 veterinary schools in the U.S., so either several states would have to share them or students from some states wouldn’t be able to attend a veterinary school where they would pay in-state tuition. So they do share in some cases. There is a joint Virginia-Maryland veterinary school, for instance. It’s located in Virginia but is supported by both states. Students from both states pay in-state tuition. Perhaps West Virginia can arrange to share a university or just some departments with nearby states.
Interesting, I didn’t know about such sharing arrangements.
One problem I see with that is that WVU has long attracted students from states where tuition was higher. In the 1980s, it was common for in-state tuition in Maryland and Pennsylvania to be higher than out-of-state tuition at WV*. Under such conditions, WVU would be giving up a lot of tuition dollars if it agreed to a sharing arrangement.
People used to joke that WVU was for smart WV kids, and dumb, rich kids from PA and NJ. The out-of-staters countered that the intelligence level of both groups was about the same.
Another possible obstacle to sharing arrangements: different academic standards at the different schools. WVU traditionally attracted out-of-state students not just because of lower tuition, but lower admission standards. Many students from PA, NJ and MD chose WVU after being turned down by Pitt, Penn State, Rutgers, College Park, etc*. Sharing arrangements with those schools would either require them to lower their standards, or turn down some WVU students. And Gordon Gee’s avowed goal of increasing WVU’s enrollment to 40,000 students would have probably required lowering standards even further.
*This was another implication in the joke I told two posts ago.
I know nothing about the subject. But I would assume that sharing would be more common with disciplines which entail a lot of technology investment (engineering, computer science, etc) and/or certification (medical fields).
Bigger cities might have several universities. When I was studying in Montréal quite a few professors divided their time between various English and French schools. They weren’t linguistics professors. But in some cases it might make sense. Maybe more so with today’s technology.
The Washington Post has a daily quiz about someone or some thing in the news. Thanks to this thread, I was able to answer today’s question! (I won’t post the question here.)
Small liberal arts consortia will sometimes share departments. Some linguistics courses were offered at Bryn Mawr and Haverford, but the department was located at Swarthmore and you’d have to take most of your classes at Swat if you attended the other two and wanted to major in it.
FWIW it was considered a social science whereas the foreign language departments were grouped with the humanities.
Gordon Gee has fiscally run every University he’s ever been in charge of into the ground (and he’s been in charge of a LOT). I don’t know how that mutherfukker keeps getting hired.
Also, WVU isn’t just getting rid of their languages. They’re getting rid of a lot of “unimportant” programs.
