THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9503310018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By ROBERT A. FRADKIN
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Last fall, Old Dominion University announced program reductions in response to reduced state funding.
In the College of Arts and Letters, these included the elimination of the religion major within philosophy; the undergraduate degree in teaching English as a second language (which has now been replaced by the master's program) in English; and the ``freezing'' of the Russian major in foreign languages.
The first two were cosmetic cutbacks since no students were in those programs, but the two departments stayed intact. No faculty members lost their positions over them. One of the two faculty positions in Russian was cut because of small enrollments, changing the nature of the foreign-languages department.
As of December 1994, the second faculty position - the one I have held since 1990 - has been removed as well. The last Russian majors will graduate this spring, ending 25 years of the Russian B.A. program just when Norfolk has established a sister city in Kaliningrad and several local educators and businesspeople have initiated joint ventures with Russia.
The foreign-languages department may continue to hire an adjunct instructor to teach beginning-level Russian, but Hampton Roads will no longer have a full-time academic voice for the languages and cultures of Russia, Eastern Europe and the rest of the former Soviet Union.
There will be no permanent person with a commitment to revitalizing the study of Russian when enrollments turn around. (Universities all over the country report declines in Russian enrollments. Such valleys are always by peaks. Just wait till Russia becomes a threat again!) Thus, the state has put the university in the absurd position of having to make choices that reduce Russian to the same second-class ``service'' status as four other important languages - Arabic, Chinese, Italian and Latin. Students wishing to pursue these languages at a higher level have nowhere else to go in southeastern Virginia.
In the German section of the foreign-languages department, one of the three professor positions was also eliminated because there are - in the university's view - too few students in that language, too. This position was occupied by a young professor who could have kept the program going when one of the very senior professors retires. With hiring and replacements at a minimum these days, my prediction is that German will soon join the ranks of mere service languages, leaving degree programs only in Spanish and French.
This is a double tragedy and a double irony for the largest university in this area. This first tragedy is that more students do not invest their abilities in studying these languages, either as a means to talk with people in other parts of the world or to have access to professional literature in their fields written elsewhere.
The second tragedy is that the university now maintains programs based purely on the numbers of students in them, irrespective of academic merit. A faculty member's worth is now gauged by the number of paying customers in his or her classroom.
Much has been written recently on the dangers of subjecting education to market forces and letting the market determine the curriculum. This university bills itself as the ``International University of Virginia,'' yet the department that seems to have suffered disproportionately because of economics is foreign languages, the department that should be playing the biggest role in preparing students for studying abroad and dealing with other cultures.
The doctoral program in international relations, in which the university is investing heavily, will also suffer because it requires language proficiency of its candidates. I would hate to think that the university's policies in one area have led it to destroy what it professes to value in other areas. (As for me, I am moving to a job at Duke University.)
Old Dominion has ``great vision'' - and can apparently secure great funding - for long-term nonacademic projects like the master plan to develop the east side of Hampton Boulevard (MetroNews, March 25), while it seems to have no vision, even for the short term, to hold on to academic programs in a temporary number slump. MEMO: Mr. Fradkin is a former professor of Russian at Old Dominion
University.
by CNB