Lack of emphasis on learning another language is appalling

Dear Editor,

Will someone please explain to me how a Carnegie Foundation Doctoral Research-Extensive institution with global aspirations can send into the world students who are incapable of understanding foreign languages and cultures? This one does.

Of 2,648 USU undergraduate degrees conferred in 1999-2000, only 423 (16 percent) were bachelor of arts degrees, signifying two years’ study of a foreign language or the equivalent. (And that number would drop substantially if it weren’t for LDS missionaries returning from foreign countries.) Even many students in the humanities leave the university with a bachelor of science degree.

Where are the language requirements? When will the university commit itself to a program of foreign language study that can prepare its students to function effectively in an international environment?

Lynn R. Eliason

Professor of German

and Russian