Yet another university pulling Modern Languages degrees

[tadjennyp]

Just seen on the news that Leicester is pulling its MFL degrees despite students having accepted offers. Are languages becoming the preserve of prestigious universities with very high tariffs? What hope do students in sixth forms in schools with low prior attainment have of going to university to study a language? I am feeling quite demoralised as an MFL teacher. What can we do to prevent the decline? And no, google translate does not do the same job as a person being able to converse with confidence.

@Sanddancing "an acknowledgment that MFL provision is moving to a large hub model"

This is a key message. Larger hubs and indeed specialist universities (Imperial, LSE, Courtauld...) are clearly going to be far more important to teaching and research quality moving forward, and to cost efficiency. The decades, even centuries, old strategy of national coverage and huge generalist universities is going to go into reverse.

Yes I think this is right. As long as maintenance costs continue to be subsidised by loans/bursaries, so that applicants aren’t geographically disadvantaged.

No doubt humanities depts are watching with interest….

Even Oxbridge shld be considering the relative sizes of their subject depts as it’s obvious from offer % that there is a hierarchy of subjects.

But if the move is towards more specialised universities what do the lower ranked ones specialise in?

Had a bit of a nightmare writing my earlier post- the offer holder days was in Manchester, but the acknowledgement was that Manchester and Edinburgh were home to this large hub opportunity and neck to neck in prestige ( fishing in the same pool).
We have it narrowed down to Edinburgh, Manchester and Leeds. Self selecting if you don't like the feel of oxbridge/ durham/ st Andrews or like can afford London.
The Edinburgh degree is 4 year, so is a competitive and attractive option

Yes, I think you are right. That does make things difficult for people who don't live within commuting distance of one of these hubs. Their choices will be restricted. That would include a lot of my students, curbing their social mobility.

1 hour a week?
We have 3 hours a week in Y7 and 4 in Y8&9. I wonder how long that will last though...

Oxford and Cambridge are outranked in some subjects by specialist universities and this trend is set to continue. Just as "language hubs" may provide critical size for the range and depth of academic activities necessary for high level language and cultural acquisition, some subjects are better suited to certain cities (why study History of Art outside London where the museums, art galleries and market makers all congregate?). Perhaps there are UK cities that could reinvent themselves as subject hubs? I always think that there are missed opportunities eg in France for a wine university in Dijon or in Belgium for an architecture and urbanism school in Bruges.

Am not sure about specialist hubs. LSE and Imperial have always been pre-eminent and essentially make a lot of cash from international students. I think rather than hubs - we will have the established unis with great rep in what they do Imperial, LSE, Courtauld and UAL plus medical schools that can get lots of international students and postgraduate for cash. But none of those are humanities hubs or rather that's not how they make their money.

You will also have large national unis that will teach a subject just because that's what they do to maintain that status - UCL, Manchester and Edinburgh..... ultimately they also make cash on foreign students but might be willing to subsidize loss making subjects like languages or archeology to ensure they cover pretty much everything.

Other unis will end up teaching what they can i.e. cash making courses which might depend on location.

@bluhkbf The Courtauld isn't a humanities hub?!

@bluhkbf "making a lot of cash from international students" aka being sufficiently attractive because so pre-eminent in their subject area that they attract the brightest and best from all over the world, prepared to pay over the odds to study in such an environment. This then allows UK universities to offer home students degrees at under cost with an outstanding peer group and outstanding academics. What's not to like?

@Ceramiq Courtauld and UAL are arts....what is not to like is that international students only do degrees that get them jobs in their home environments so STEM ....and maybe practical arts like fashion design. They do not do things that don't get them jobs or go against their cultural and political context. That's not automatically the same in the UK or for UK students.

Pus if the Chinese market and realistically it is China plus a bit of India stop sending their students to the UK - 70% of student income is gone for a lot of unis esp. the big ones e.g. UCL. That's a rather insane system and very precarious.

@bluhkbf Courtauld and UAL have absolutely nothing in common. The Courtauld is an academic humanities universities; UAL an art production school.

That's not the picture dh paints of the well-ranked university where he works. He says that quite a lot of the international students barely speak English well enough to access the courses.

@1000StrawberryLollies oh yes our international students often only manage using their laptop with simultaneous translation though some are great. It's a very mixed picture.

@Ceramiq you are probably right....I work in a big london one and only know people and figures from UAL....am less on the ball with Courtauld.

Yes, dh says some of the (presumably wealthier) ones take an actual human translator along with them to lectures!

I think all our international students are wealthy - I mean they pay 35k per year.

However, I do know that our MFL dept numbers have collapsed last year and we did have to cross subsidized them....in our case because we have lots of international students. However, if our International students stop coming, then we certainly wouldn't be in a surplus and maybe MFL degrees would also need to be cut. At the moment, they are being maintained despite losing funding, how long for....who knows.

It's not viable to cross-subsidize MFL departments because they aren't producing world-leading research. While there are some very interesting British historians (Julian Jackson anyone?) and art historians (Sarah Wilson) of France with exceptional impact in French academia, British academic perspectives on French literature are marginal and dodgy.

@Ceramiq am not entirely sure what you mean by world leading research....research doesn't pay much money whether it's world leading or not. And those depts are being subsidized - my dept does just that as we are in the same faculty.

World-leading research is what universities get ranked on and students pay to be taught by world-leading researchers who create new knowledge.

International students want to be taught by Lea Ypi. For example.

I mean really....not sure that's entirely true. International students often barely know which uni they are at, and certainly don't always know which dept they are in. They pay the real cash and are the real customers. Yes, unis get ranked and thats important but mainly for scholarships that International stusnets can get from their own governments - e.g. you have to be in top 100 world unis to get a Chinese state one. However, they are not ranked by subject - but collectively. Otherwise global rankings are generally for prestige- we don't get any more cash just because we are well ranked internationally. The government grant of yesteryears is sort of gone now and even REF really doenst bring much cash- qudos yes but not cash. I sometimes wonder whether my uni spend more cash on prepping for REF than in getting cash from it.

Here are the recently published QS World Rankings 2026 filtered for UK universities (50% weighting is for research);
Oxford 1st and Cambridge 2nd then next UK university is Edinburgh (12th),
UCL (13th), Kings (21st), Manchester (28th), Durham (40th)

Sorbonne is at 27th.

www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/modern-languages?countries=gb

@bluhkbf That really isn't true at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, LSE or the Courtauld. That might well be true in parts of UCL and as for King's or SOAS, God help us!

@AdaptingtoChange The QS rankings by subject are WAY more interesting and relevant (in particular in the UK where undergradutes apply first and foremost for a subject).

@Ceramiq what isnt true?

That international students don't know what department they are in!

Yes I agree @Ceramiq - the link and are the rankings in my post are for MFL - shows when you click through - sorry I wasn't explicit in my post