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.

I think AI is a bigger reason than Brexit. A friend of mine used to be a translator for a big multinational, she’s now an editor as the translation work became scarce as AI took over (although editing is likely to go the same way). She wouldn’t recommend doing languages or many humanity subjects as the job market is shite at the moment, and there is no point getting into debt for a ‘useless’ degree. I think more and more degree course will become obsolete. Shame they got rid of all the polytechnics really…

Languages are a waste of a degree! Proficiency qualirications like c1/c2 are much more recognised!

Leicester is also scrapping its film degree to add to the woes.

If you look at the timeline of the decline in languages at GCSE then it's clear that Brexit isn't a big factor: https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/15043/

English, really?

Selective school?

In my comp we have 1 100% success rate for MFL - massive sample of one student who was a voracious linguist. Self taught about 15 languages and got all A stars at A level.

English is about 8 students I know of across about 5 years. No offers.

I did two languages at A level but didn't do an MFL degree. My uni did make everyone do a literature module in a language (I did German). That uni (York) abandoned that because it put off applicants. So silly.

My DS could have done MFL at uni but for a range of reasons he was put off. A lot of it was fear of its demands, I think. He would have been targeting Leicester, OBU (still going?), UCLAN.

Did politics instead. Works in Dunelm. Hey ho.

Get a German degree and Aldi's famous Graduate scheme is open to you!

If you look at the Cambridge admissions statistics for 2024 MML has the highest offer to application ratio out of every subject, but English is pretty middle of the pack: https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/ug_admissions_statistics_2024_cycle.pdf

I can't see that Oxford publishes the same breakdown by course.

Well, quite.

DD’s grammar school have a very good MFL offering (French, German, Spanish & Russian all offered right through from Y7 to sixth form level). Out of a cohort of 180 pupils, only 3 of them went on to study a language related degree at university. The demand just isn’t there for this generation

It’s not true that you can’t get a top grade in a language if you are a non-native speaker. It’s off-putting but should not otherwise affect a good language learner. Loafs of us at my Uni had top grades and were bog standard Brits.

As already mentioned, I think the overspecialisation of Alevels is one of the factors. When you have to whittle your choices down to 3 or 4, an MFL is just not going to be attractive as it’s a risky grade with no clear job prospects.

Learning a language is very tough and demanding. I think the main problem is that there are a bunch of people in the world who speak it perfectly, better than you ever will, with no effort at all. How can you ever compete with that! To me that’s what makes MFLs different to other subjects where everyone has to put in roughly the same effort.

Maybe if we had a lot more people going abroad as part of their degree as standard, there would be the appetite for learning a language earlier. You aren't going to spend an entire year saying something into your phone for it to spit out a translation. You would need to make some effort to learn.

It depends on the language. I would guess you and your cohort mostly studied European languages? There are some language A-levels where they are almost entirely aimed at native or heritage speakers now. There's an article about this for Mandarin here: https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/secondary/studying-Mandarin-a-level-is-too-difficult.

....the inward-looking idea that we are not part of something larger than our poxy island.

Have you never heard of the Commonwealth? Which has been around a lot longer than the EU. There is a world beyond 'Europe'.

I do think we specialise at A Level far too early and continuing some form of maths, language and humanities would be more beneficial for our students all round.

Continuing maths beyond O Level would not have benefited me at all. It would have been a waste of my time and the teachers'.

I would have liked to take German at O Level (French was required), but the requirement to take a science meant I couldn't fit it in with other subjects I wanted to do.

The problem with using study abroad as an enticement is that students increasingly don't want to study abroad, either. The university I work at has had an absolute collapse in the number of our students who do a year abroad and many of the few remaining students we have studying MFL change courses specifically so they don't have to do their year abroad. It's really sad but probably reflects similar trends to the collapse in language-learning - students find it intimidating, don't see the value and, crucially, don't want to extend their study for a year.

Depends on your viewpoint. C1/C2 is just a level of language proficiency.

Incidentally the students who do do a year abroad very often report it as an amazing, life-changing experience, and many of them happily partake in publicity to promote it to other students - which seems to make absolutely no difference!

Ah, yes that makes more sense now.

I agree the problem is largely at secondary level and became inevitable once the government made an MFL GCSE purely optional.

I have a couple of questions:
Do MFL undergraduate have to pay tuition fees for their year abroad?

And are foreign language diplomas considered as favourably as A levels when applying for MFL degrees?

This came up on trending. I don’t usually post here.

I found languages very hard at school and so did a number of my friends.

I did a maths degree and I know from people’s reactions when they ask what I studied, that my subject, which was always my favourite, is regarded as difficult. But I think that MFL are tougher. MFL is a difficult degree and there are softer options out there if you want the university experience I suppose .

They usually pay a very reduced tuition fee for that year (15% is typical), but it's still another year of living expenses etc so they end up more in debt than students on a four year course, which many find off-putting.

Most universities will consider a language certificate or other alternative qualifications as well as A-levels, if the candidate can evidence they are capable of degree-level study (to be honest, a student is much more likely to get a generous offer for languages than many other subjects because, as noted, universities are usually pretty desperate for applicants for MFL).

I agree. It’s really sad. My dd has applied for MFL. All Russell group due to the lack of choice. She didn’t put Leicester down. I’m not surprised it’s been pulled. There were zero lecturers to talk to at the open day, only 2 students.

Idk if dd will get the grades (ABB). We are hoping if not there will be some flexibility.

Portsmouth offers lower grades of 96-104 UCAS points and they also do a foundation year if needed so your students should be able to go there if they want. Oxford Brookes do French with translation and Nottingham Trent do International Business and French. If you do the dual degree, this gives you a French qualification. Both ask for 112-120 UCAS points.

And there is always clearing.

When courses are recruiting in single figures, unfortunately it does not make financial sense to keep offering these courses when universities are having to make financial changes - unfortunately, the demand isn’t there

This was definitely the case for non native speaking Russian students at DD’s school. It was near impossible for them to compete with the native speakers at A level!

I’m astonished that anyone would get into 50k+ of debt to study languages to be brutally honest. Go live/work abroad for a year. Cheaper and more fun.