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...Getting rid of its German department. The chair of foreign language instruction doesn't want to fire anyone, so she's waiting until the current professors retire, but they're both in their sixties, so it probably won't be long.

On one hand, this makes me very happy because I'll be transferring next fall (even though the school I'm hoping to transfer to is going to be doing some serious damage to their German department as well).

On the other, it's downright depressing. I'm a German language major and am semi-considering becoming a teacher or professor of German in the future, but this leaves me wondering if there'll be any demand for it? I keep hearing that foreign language instruction is being made more of a priority, yet language departments seem to be taking the worst cuts (more than most other departments) at the public colleges and universities.

If y'all are still in school, is your school/college/university adding languages, cutting languages, or some of both?

That sucks cry

My school is adding more languages every year, and they are cutting some of the Spanish teachers, becasue we have like 8 of them.

I'm sorry to hear that. sad But I don't think you have to worry about there being no demand for a foreign language teacher.

The field of foreign languages is still very much in need of people, and since not a lot of people have the ability to speak many languages, it's not hard to find work for someone who can.

That being said, for German teaching in particular, you may have to do some work on that. But there are lots of other opportunities with the German language not restricted to teaching it. smile Good luck! heart

My school had a huge budget cut this past year, and there are no longer as many teachers- for anything. So, we have this thing called "distance learning" at my school where we are taught by a teacher in a different city. As far as I know, there's a pre-calculus, French (which I'm in), and psychology class being taught like that. : It's not a very good way to learn, albeit fun.

Oh, man that's the worst.
When I was in HS, I was in French, and carried on into French 2. Just when I was signed up for French 3 however, they cut it out because the teacher left and there was no one in the area, I suppose, to teach French. (Either that or it was another budget cut). So all there was was German and Spanish. I opted for Spanish 1 and 2 after I figured out that there wasn't gonna be a French 3...
Which is why, a lot of the time, I've taken it upon myself to learn a language, so that in case anything like that situation happened, I still had the drive to study on my own time,til another opportunity for class presented itself.

Edit: It's very interesting how language and art departments are always the first on the chopping block, as if they weren't important...As if everyone NEEEEEEDS algebra. rolleyes

AAAGGGGGHHHH.

*Ahem*

I just got an e-mail saying my uni is considering closing the Linguistics and English Language department! Budget cuts or some crap like that. What a load of rubbish! Agh! I am not impressed. It's stupid that they want to close our school! I mean, we have a bilingualism research centre just down the road, David Crystal used to lecture here and he's an honourary professor in the department, this year we started to have the subject taught through the medium of Welsh for the first time AND be taught Welsh Linguistics.. (and the world needs more Welsh-language linguists ;D)

A lot of the staff members left the department last year, and are not getting replaced. This makes me saaad :c

The ONE good thing about this (my mother pointed this out to me, I wouldn't have thought so selfishly on the matter otherwise XD) is that if the school closes then I'll be one of the only people with a degree in Welsh linguistics which'll make getting a job in the field preeeetty easy. But that would be the case anyway since it's not particularly popular.

BAAH.

My university doesn't seem to be cutting any language departments. We have everything from French to Japanese to Somali to Zulu to Uzbek to Tibetan to Sanskrit to...er...you get the idea. sweatdrop Then again, my university's HUGE so that might be why...

Ah yes, in high school it was always our language department that took the proverbial beatings... My German class in my senior year was six people... They offered Latin for the year below me, then had to take it away again because there wasn't enough interest, so none of the Latin students could pursue it any further...

I understand making strategic class cuts and everything, but I do love my language department. It makes me sad to think that they might get rid of German unless interest picks up!