I blame the wine in schools program.

For the other departments, I'm not sure. Whenever I've brought up the issue to my friends who are tenured in the other departments, they sort of dance around the question. However, I know that funds were cut and, due to Michigan's current situation, we've had to really come down hard on who want to let in my department. Generally, a univ. will only admit those they can afford to fund in the Ph.D. level.

You'll still be either required, or encouraged to learn French in other countries than just France.

In North Korea, Iran, or some other country that would hire a nuclear specialist?

All Masters programs require at least 6 to 12 credit hours worth of a foreign language in order to complete them successfully. Its traditional academia. Now, there are "schools", for lack of a more fitting word, that will let you slide through without having to take a language class or two. However, think on this for a moment. These "schools" are robbing you of a traditional and well-rounded education, ergo you are losing at least $900 or more worth of an education you would've had at a traditional university. You want, believe it or not, to take the language courses. If nothing more than to be able to speak another language at a layman's level, you are gaining knowledge that you can use in your diss., should you choose to continue your education. Once you get your masters, I strongly enthuse that you continue to your Ph.D.. You've already finished the main brunt of your work and education. You would only have 2 or 3 years more of school before you finished your diss, or you might even have less than that if you started your diss. while you were studying for your masters.

On another note, FSU (Florida State University) is also closing its doors a little earlier than normal. I've five friends down there who are tenured and are saying they're doing the same thing that MSU is currently doing. Just a little FYI.

Side Note: If you think college "sucks", then common sense should tell you that this thread is certainly not for you.

I used to speak French well enough to manage in France on my own for a while, but I would be pretty suspicious that any "schools" that tried to convince me credit hours in a foreign language for a masters' degree for anything other than an extremely course-appropriate reason was a good idea was less than confident in the subject I actually want to learn, rather than the other way around.

Naturally some of the better-quality or at least more prestigious schools do still have these kinds of requirements, but let's face that as important as foreign languages are in the modern world, people have their priorities and specialisation is not getting any more avoidable.

I concur...Engineering majors at my University do not have to take a single class of foreign language.

I certainly don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, I hated foreign language in high school. Just not my cup of tea.

Again, its traditional academia. I was a science major, someone who wanted to study gene splicing and reactive materials. I thought the same thing. However, after, I believe, 9 credit hours of Latin, in my grad classes, I can now pick up prefixes and suffixes without batting an eye. My undergrad didn't require the language courses (though I could have taken them as electives). But going back to my original point, there is a big difference between these "schools" that are popping up everywhere like toe fungus and a traditional university. Though, I can see where you are coming from. Your question, if I'm correct, is asking, "Why do I need a language credit if I'm going into something that doesn't need language to begin with i.e., computers, ballet, business, et cetera?"

My answer: Its traditional academia. Since the time that the first university popped up on the world, languages have been required for all master programs in order to prepare someone for their Ph.D. as well as to make sure they are an educated and well-rounded individual. Its based on the belief of education will make someone intelligent. Why not teach them a foreign language of some sorts to help them become more educated?

Its traditional academia. We could change it, I suppose, but therein sits the age-old saying. "Why fix something if it isn't broken?"

Edit: Upon reading the posts I missed, let me answer those questions in this post as well. I'm talking about the graduate level, not the undergraduate level. Typically, when you enter into a graduate level at any major state university, you are required to take a minimum amount of language credits.

Latin is a little different than most languages (as would Greek be in my opinion), as a lot of scientific jargon is in Latin.

On the flip side I think that continuing to do something just because it's always been done is one of the worst reasons.

I'm sure there are several majors where foreign language fits perfectly. It's fairly useless for an engineering major though. I already need 128 hours just to get my Bachelors (compared to 120 of most majors), and none of those include a foreign language class.

But every person who majors in Arts and Sciences at my university does need 12 hours of a foreign language. That just seems like such overkill, I don't know why a Math major, for example, would need that much foreign language.

I'm sure it isn't "broken" in the obvious sense you're thinking - but as important as mathematics, philosophy, economics, English language, computer science and related things are in the modern day, some of the above even more so than foreign languages, there is a good reason we don't force all of them on people past GCSE level anymore!

Traditional academia is not respectable just because it's traditional (and I say this even though I respect Oxbridge which I understand from my friends there to be pretty damn traditional.)

I have no use whatsoever for foreign languages in my current degree, although for some reason I have a talent for them and consistently scored towards the top of my county in both French and Latin in secondary school. There is absolutely no need to force me to spend course hours on it and there is also no reason to look down on schools which do not insist on wasting my time with it (I use "waste" loosely here, but see paragraph 1.)

I think 'well rounded' educations that require subjects having nothing to do with the subject you want to learn are more annoying than anything. And I love college. For folks on a budget or who need to get their degree in a certain amount of time for some reason, having to waste time taking 12 hours of a foreign language (at $165 an hour at my local state University - that's nearly two grand for something completely irrelevant to anything but someone planning on doing some traveling or something and the Rosetta Stone software is hella cheaper if that's all you want) is just annoying.

I can understand that money is in question, especially right now. I can also empathize and understand that a lot of people would rather skip the language courses and continue onwards to finishing their undergrad degrees. Believe me, I was in your shoes at one point too. I didn't enjoy the Latin classes in the least. I thought them petty, annoying, and a basic waste of my time when I was taking them.

However, I see, with hindsight being 20/20, that I'm much better off having them than not. If nothing more than to increase my own intelligence and education, they helped me become a better researcher and give me a foot in the door as far as my own field of study and research goes. As per the others i.e., engineering and so forth, I can't give you an answer because I do not know where you're going for your undergrad nor do I know who your dean is or even what your curriculum entails. I do, however, know that Oxbridge is one of the top schools. If their students are able to land a job in engineering and stay competitive, wouldn't it be a bonus rather than a negative to have a proficient understanding of another language versus not having it?

It took me a while to find this on my University's CS website, but,



I'm not going to bother looking it up for other Engineering studies, but I imagine they have done the same thing. I go to the University of Kentucky...which is a pretty good school too.

No longer required? Is UoK a state school or private school?

Just like it would be a bonus rather than a negative to be familiar with economics, English language, philosophy, mathematics and computer science. If it's just about having important life skills, replace foreign languages with the one of those you see as most important (computer science or economics?). But if isn't really done at the university level, it means it's just tradition for the sake of tradition.

I also remember hearing complaints recently about a BSc student having to take "humanities"/arts courses - but not the other way around. This is much the same kind of thing. If you are really going to somehow judge that being "cultured" is more important than modern-day life skills like computers, at least don't force students to go along with that. It's not helpful to them at all.

It is a state school.

Also, our CS doctoral program is ranked in the top 20% in the Nation.

http://www.cs.uky.edu/events/news.php

We have a 19 million dollar research facility being built to form a "digital village" too, which I imagine will boost that number up.

edit: Sadly this isn't going to be complete until after I've graduated, so I don't get to enjoy it.

Shiri: No one is forcing anyone to take the language credits. If someone doesn't agree with it, then it would seem plausible that, once that person receives their graduate degree, they can go on and do research on how language credits are no longer needed for someone to be academically trained. Or they could simply go to another school that doesn't ask for them.

Deschain: In my personal opinion, that's not quite right. I'd have asked for the language credits to be left in there. However, they are a state school, so I'm sure they know what they're doing. However, here at MSU, we do require several of our graduates to take a few language courses. The curriculum, however, does have a chance to vary from state to state, depending on who is on the committee. When did they stop asking people to have the language credits?

I would personally prefer not to learn any languages, since... I really can't. I fail at learning languages.