Some languages may seem less vital in a world increasingly dominated by English. Web sites and new technologies offer instant translations. The small, interactive classes typical of foreign language instruction are costly for universities.
But the paradox, some experts in higher education say, is that many schools are eliminating language degrees and graduate programs just as they begin to embrace an international mission: opening campuses abroad, recruiting students from overseas and talking about graduating citizens of the world. The University at Albany’s motto is “The World Within Reach.”
“There’s no way on earth we should be cutting these languages,” said John M. Hamilton, executive vice chancellor and provost at Louisiana State University, where officials this year decided to phase out majors in German and Latin, as well as basic instruction in Portuguese, Russian, Swahili and Japanese, after losing $42 million in public financing over the last two years.
In a scathing report earlier this year, the Cour des Comptes, the French equivalent of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, noted that the annual budget for education makes it the single largest area of government spending, ahead even of defense. Yet, said the report, the system is failing many of the 10 million children in its care: "The large number of young people with major problems at school shows that the educational system as it's constituted today isn't capable of responding to their needs."
France is a country of rigidities dominated by corporatist vested interests. The result is a society that stifles individuality, creativity and ambition. It is not only eminent biologists and economists who leave France. There are also masses of talented young people who just can’t stand it: some go to the U.S., others to the U.K. and elsewhere. --- It Will Get Worse for France Jean-Pierre Lehmann is a professor of international political economy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The salaries at U.S. colleges for young science scholars are roughly three times higher than those in France, no small consideration. We also out-French the French when it comes to working conditions. Academics appreciate the better laboratories and more time for research (and fewer hours devoted to classroom teaching). No wonder that, from 1996 to 2006, 40 percent of the French science students who came to the U.S. for their education stayed in America. From 1971 to 1980 only 7 percent of the visiting French remained.
In general, however, it is likely the American entrepreneurial spirit is what captivates the French, as it does so many others.
The French spend less than one half as much per student on higher education than do the Americans, and only 1.3 percent of their G.D.P. on universities versus 2.9 percent in the United States. American institutions pay higher salaries, and offer better facilities, and lower teaching loads, and so on. --Richard Vedderdirects the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and teaches economics at Ohio University.
"A study by the Institut Montaigne found that academics constitute a much larger percentage of French émigrés to the United States today than 30 years ago: 27 percent of the total from 1996 to 2006, compared with 8 percent from 1971 and 1980. In particular, many of France’s best biologists and economists are now in the United States.
Research published by the UCU shows the annual cost of a degree has risen by 300% in two decades. It says the cost of going to university to a graduate from an average household in 1988-89 was £1,545.50. This had risen to £6,360 by the latest academic year. By 2012 – the year the new tuition fee cap is due to be introduced – the union suggests that the annual cost for fees and maintenance will be £12,750.
The next time activists block your campus, go home and treat yourself to a brilliant lecture from a top professor at a $50,000 a year Ivy League school. Here's how...
"M.I.T.’s announcement in 2001 that it was going to put its entire course catalog online gave a jump-start to what has now become a global Open Educational Resources Movement whose goal, said Susan D’Antoni of Athabasca University, in Canada, is “to try to share the world’s knowledge.”
Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Michigan all now offer substantial portions of their courses online. In Britain, the Open University, which has been delivering distance learning for over 40 years, offers free online courses in every discipline on the OpenLearn Web site; the Open University also maintains a dedicated YouTube channel and has often had courses listed on the top 10 downloads at iTunes University. There, students can gain access to beginner courses in French, Spanish and German as well as courses in history, philosophy and astronomy — all free."
Fewer workers to pay the pensions of more old people. That's the flip side of people living longer and having less children.
The big losers? Young people onto whom feckless, irresponsible, greedy elders have shifted the burden.
Unfunded pension obligations will fall, of course, on the young. Laurence Boone, an economist at Barclays Capital in Paris, calculated that the French "pension-fund deficit will widen to €24.5 billion by 2030." (source: The Economist).
This problem is not unique to France. That is why the USA and most European countries have increased their retirement age. No country can afford to pay full pensions to employees who retire at sixty and live until ninety. It's mathematical.
So why are French students as young as 15 marching in the streets to defend a system which loads them with debt, forcing them to work longer so that their parents can work less?
Pure politics.
Desperate to fight the government, the Unions, Socialist Party, UNEF and UNL (the national university and high school students unions) have called for reinforcements among the young. Having no jobs, the young don't lose salary -- just education --when they "strike". The police can't intervene for fear of an accident. And this terrifies the government. Ideal cannon fodder.
In an irony that no one has explained to the young demonstrators, the SNCF, RATP and EDF workers who started the strike benefit from extremely advantageous REGIMES SPECIAUX: they pay lower contributions, retire earlier (as young as 52) and receive benefits according to an exceptionally advantageous calculation (last 6 months of salary).
That the youngest and most exposed victims of the current system have been manipulated by ambitious politicians into acting against their own interests is sad but not surprising.
Here is former Socialist presidential candidate calling on 15 and 16 years olds to demonstrate in the streets, apparently oblivious that some parents might object to her encouraging their children to cut classes.
Ms Royal issued a statement the next day saying she never said what she said. Judge for yourself.
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If you think that anything written here is an exaggeration, check out the websites of the Socialist Party and UNEF, the union of university students and UNL the union of high school students.
This year, for the first time, French slipped out of the top 10 most popular GCSE subjects. Fewer than one in four pupils (22.7 per cent) now sit the exam.
Nicole Chapman, head of the girls' school, and Tom Sherrington, head of King Edward, said in a joint statement: "We are hugely concerned by the deepening crisis in language learning in the UK and feel compelled to play a part in supporting moves to break the cycle of decline which has been apparent in recent years." - No language GCSE means no sixth-form place, say top schools By Richard Garner, Education Editor The Independent
