September 2002-January 2003
The challenges for languages providers

Languages in higher education are going through a sea change. The long term trends identified in the Nuffield Report two years ago have accelerated, with students deserting language degrees and entire departments closing, while students flock into language classes accompanying degrees in other disciplines, and into voluntary language study outside their degree programme.

The same pattern is being observed in other countries, and the UK increasingly finds itself in a European and global education market.

As a new landscape for languages emerges from the changes, it is timely to explore its contours and implications. How will higher education reshape its approach to languages? What impact will the changes have on other sectors, especially the later years of secondary school? What can the students of the future expect and what opportunities will be available to them? Will the same market shifts affect schools in the shorter or longer term?

Professor Michael Kelly set out to identify the questions and challenges, and to open up the fresh thinking needed to tackle them. He led a project, designed to focus and inform thinking about the issues involved, and to prepare longer term strategic responses.
The project included:

research on the detail of changes in higher education languages in the UK over the past five years, including trends in staff and student numbers, programmes and modules offered, modes of delivery, and organisational restructuring;

research on comparable changes in a selected number of other countries, especially USA, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Italy;

research on changes in take up and delivery of languages in secondary schools, post-16, over the same period;

a literature search on recent academic and policy oriented discussions of the changes.

Professor Kelly and Dr Diana Jones prepared a discussion paper, setting out the results of the above research and identifying implications for higher education and schools. This was presented in November 2002 to an expert seminar of invited specialists concerned with policy for languages in higher education and schools.

A report, entitled A New Landscape for Languages was then published, taking into account the dicussions of the seminar.