Surprise closures of language programs called “disappointing,” “strange,” and “discouraging”
The Department of Defense will shut down all but one of its Chinese flagship programs, which provide intensive critical-languages instruction, at universities west of the Mississippi River.
The department’s National Security Education Program notified Chinese flagship programs at Brigham Young University, San Francisco State University, and the Universities of Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington in March that they would lose all funds. That leaves Arizona State University as the only institution in the western half of the country with one of the government-funded intensive Chinese programs.
A Defense Department spokesman said the closures were a result of a “congressional change in funding for the program in fiscal year 2024.”
In notifying the universities, the department said it had based its decision on “enrollment trends, resource allocation, and strategic planning.” But flagship-center directors said they were shocked by the move and concerned that the cutbacks were concentrated along the critical Pacific Rim.
“It’s pretty surprising we weren’t funded,” said Matthew Christensen, director of Brigham Young’s Chinese flagship. “It is strange.”
The closures are yet another blow to foreign-language instruction in American higher education. In the past year, West Virginia University slashed world languages, eliminating almost three-quarters of its faculty positions and getting rid of all foreign-language majors. The Modern Language Association reported its steepest-ever falloff in foreign-language enrollments, with declines in 12 of the 15 most commonly studied languages, including Chinese.
The language-flagship program was started in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, out of concern by government officials that America lacked proficient speakers in foreign languages important to national security. Its four-year curriculum is intended to get undergraduates to professional-level proficiency through cultural and linguistic immersion, study abroad, and rigorous coursework.
The three initial programs were in Arabic, Chinese, and Korean, with BYU hosting the original Chinese flagship.
Nineteen campus flagship programs continue to provide instruction in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, and Russian, excluding the five programs that will be shuttered as of May 31. There were previously as many as 30 campus-based language centers.
Program directors said the closure notices were unexpected because past program renewals had typically been routine. “No one saw this coming,” said Charles Egan, who leads San Francisco State’s Chinese flagship.
Christensen, of BYU, said he was dismayed that officials with the funding agency said past accomplishments were not a criterion for renewal. Not only is BYU one of the oldest language flagships, it has a track record of success — 78 percent of program graduates score a “superior” level of proficiency on a commonly used language test, he said.
Although enrollments in the BYU program fell during the pandemic, the numbers had been rebounding, to 30 students this year.
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, director of the Chinese flagship at the University of Oregon, called the decision “deeply disappointing.” Like BYU, Oregon’s program has a strong and enduring academic record, dating to 2005. Jing-Schmidt said she was “puzzled” that the Defense Department had ignored geographic diversity in its closure choices, particularly on the Asia-facing Pacific Coast.
Although both Oregon and BYU have strong foreign-language departments that will allow current flagship participants to continue to study Chinese, students as part of the program receive funding for a full year of study abroad, as well as immersive instruction. Students get weekly tutoring and attend summertime language programs. Many of the Oregon program’s 60 students are first generation or low income, and it may be difficult for them to access such intensive cultural and language instruction or to reach professional proficiency without financial assistance, Jing-Schmidt said.
The Defense Department allocates grants to colleges of up to $20,000 per student.
Likewise, many of the students in the University of Washington’s Chinese flagship are economically disadvantaged or are students of color, said Victor Balta, a university spokesman.
“Without this funding we are missing out on opportunities to train and prepare future leaders for engagement with expertise about Chinese-speaking regions,” Balta said, adding that closure “signals challenges for our effort to enable American college students to become culturally and linguistically competent when such skills are ever more important.”
At San Francisco State, being awarded a language flagship “was a real feather in our cap for an urban university likes ours,” Egan said, especially when most reside at research-intensive institutions. In addition to the per-student grants, the Defense Department provided program funding and even paid half of the salary for a newly hired tenure-track professor of Chinese at the university over several years.
While Egan said he understood the constraints placed on the department because of congressional budget cuts, he called the decision “very, very discouraging.” Losing a flagship program is a “double whammy” when college foreign-language programs are at risk of funding reductions, he said.
Neither Anais Thomas nor Grace Guertin came to college having studied Chinese. But the two University of Oregon students, both juniors, have attained high proficiency. Through the flagship program, they spent summers in intensive programs at Middlebury College and the University of Rhode Island and in Taiwan. Next year, they will take part in a capstone year, studying at a partner college in Taiwan and doing internships abroad.
The Defense Department will support students already accepted into the capstone program, as well as those on summertime language study. But students who are earlier in their studies won’t get such assistance. One of their classmates is planning to transfer to another college with a language flagship, said Thomas, a Chinese and global-studies double major, but other have “used it as a sign not to continue” studying Chinese.
Guertin, a Chinese and business-administration double major, called the program closures shortsighted. “Our future is going to be with China, whether people like it or not.”
Thomas and Guertin, who are, respectively, president and vice president of Banzhang, the Oregon program’s student-leadership group, started a petition on Change.org, calling for reinstatement of the five flagships scheduled to close at the end of this month. It currently has almost 1,600 signatures. The university is also working with the Oregon congressional delegation to educate lawmakers on the negative impact of the cuts, for the students and for national security.
“We decided we wanted to fight,” Thomas said.