It is a paradox of British higher education that our international profile has never been more important, yet fewer universities are offering language degrees. No wonder the government is worried that British graduates will be unable to make it in the global environment. Are we sleepwalking into tongue-tied isolation?
One obvious reason for the pressure on language degrees is that fewer British students are taking languages at GCSE and A-level. But that is not the full story: there are also fewer language degrees to choose from, and more students now want different kinds of language degree.
The shrinkage in the number of universities offering language degrees is well documented, and shows no sign of abating. This is largely the result of simple market forces in a competitive, zero-sum game. Over the last decade, student numbers have remained at around the same level, but some departments have grown and others have declined.
The result is that a majority of language students now study at Russell Group universities. "Able linguists" tend to be bright students who can cope with high A-level offers. This year, many of them were able to trade up, under the new rules of the Ucas marketplace, after they got their A-level results.
Many university language departments have been squeezed by this concentration. With small numbers of students, it is uneconomic to teach the variety of courses required, and university managers are increasingly reluctant to continue supporting loss-making departments. There will be more closures of language departments if the market continues to operate in this way.
Larger departments, by contrast, are able to offer students a choice of several languages at different levels of proficiency. They offer courses on the culture and society of the different countries where the languages are spoken, and they are likely to have a critical mass of researchers providing up-to-the-minute content for their courses.
At the same time, students are changing their tastes in languages. Surprisingly, more students are interested in language itself. How do languages work? Who speaks them? How do people acquire languages? More students want to learn several languages, with three-language degrees becoming more popular. And more students are thinking of careers in languages; translation and interpreting are attracting more interest.
The value of languages for careers has been well publicised, but the downside may be that students are beginning to associate language degrees with careers in languages. They can get the general career advantage of languages by studying electives alongside a degree in another subject. This is a rational decision, but the results are difficult to manage within universities.
It is not all bad news, however. Below the radar, students are taking opportunities to learn languages as part of their studies, as an elective module, or as an extra-curricular bolt-on. Language centre courses, university-wide language programmes and lifelong learning programmes are buoyant.
Some students are making up for their lack of languages at school; some are starting a new language that their school didn't offer; and quite a few want a taster of an exotic language with a different writing system.
There are real benefits to this, because students are able to get to GCSE-level proficiency in one year and A-level equivalent in two years. It's just a shame they had to wait until university to do it.
The students who take most advantage of these language courses are the international ones. They have come to Britain to develop their international profile, and they jump at the chance of extending their portfolio of languages. They know that languages give them an advantage, and British students are starting to catch on.
But the falling number of language department nationally puts at risk the academic infrastructure for languages. Language learning is the tip of an iceberg: it needs to be supported by knowledge and understanding of other languages and cultures, in teaching and research. This requires a vibrant community of language centres and departments offering programmes at degree level. Left to the market, this infrastructure could melt away and leave UK language programmes stranded, like a polar bear on a lonely ice floe.
• Michael Kelly is head of modern languages at the University of Southampton.
