Foreign language requirement at UMass for majors in behavioral and social science - how bad is it?

Colleges & Universities University of Massachusetts - Amherst
1

D is seriously considering UMass (admitted EA back in December as undecided major), and wants to major in economics, or possibly psychology or sociology. She absolutely hates studying foreign language. UMass’s web site has a lot of encouraging information about how getting to fourth level of one language in high school completes UMass’s GenEd requirements. The day she finished Spanish 4H in high school was probably the happiest day of her life. But …

Many of the traditional college majors (like the ones mentioned above) are in UMass’s college of behavioral and social science. That college’s web site describes a “global education” requirement, which is over and above the UMass GenEd requirements. If you read the fine print, there are several ways to satisfy the global education requirement, but pretty much all of them require foreign language. And the requirement is pretty severe. You can’t take it P/F. You have to get 15 credits beyond your current proficiency level. There are some options to satisfy the requirement that involve less than 15 credits of language, but seem to require an awful lot of courses in non-Western culture.

Please. D just wants to major in one of the traditional, real academic subjects. Having to speak fluent Spanish seems like a pretty severe requirement just to major in econ. They even have some easy, watered down calculus and statistics courses for econ students - and calc and stat are actually relevant to the study of econ. I really can’t believe that every econ/psych/soc major at UMass graduates fluent in a second language. What am I missing? Is the global education requirement really this bad? Is there some way around the foreign language requirement that I’m not seeing? It just seems so strange that 1 hour south at UConn, you pass Spanish 3 in high school and you’re done - period. If she really has to take 2.5 years of foreign language, this might be a dealbreaker at UMass, and that’s a shame.

2

Hello,

As someone who HATED learning French in HS and is a current Political Science major in the school of Social Sciences at UMass I understand why you are a bit upset with this stipulation. This being said, within the next ten to twenty years the worlds economy will switch to Asia and students around the world will stop learning English in some other countries and will likely start learning Chinese. (China just past our GDP) This is likely part of the reason why UMass instituted this policy. Especially when it comes to majors like Econ, Poly Sci, and Business the ability to have a world view will become more important than in any time in US history.

At the SS school, when it comes to a language, only six credits are required at Umass. This is only one semester of an intensive language course and then no more language. As you probably know, some cultural classes are also needed in addition to the language class, many of which are relevant to economics and count towards and Econ major. Also, assuming you D want’s to join an large business having some language experience can only help in this day and age.

Additionally, it may be tough to believe but many UMass students I know at UMass speak a second language very well and I think this puts them in an advantaged position in getting a job. In my case after struggling in French for three years in HS I was pushed to pursue Chinese at UMass and ended up loving it. This is mostly because it has the same word order as English and very little grammar. (Unlike French…) In addition, it has no masculine and feminine genders like Spanish does, and it even has no verb conjugation! This means you don’t need to know why a table is masculine or feminine! WoooHoo! (Not saying you D would love Chinese) lol

PS - Lastly, ask yourself the question, could an economist “truly” understand the US economy without understanding the world economy? (In many way there isn’t a US economy, it is only a segment of the greater whole)

Thanks for listening, I hope this helps, I don’t want to come off as all-knowing, I just want to try to make lemonade out of these lemons you speak of. Good Luck!

3

I feel the main reasons iterated by Halcyon are correct; I’d only add that it need not be Mandarin, nor necessarily an Asian predominance, that demands insight and an ability to interact on a high level within the social sciences (for a current European example, see Germany’s decisive influence in the Eurozone, re: Greek debt, as well as Germany’s role in the current crisis with the Ukraine, which involves many countries). Languages, literatures, classics, most history subjects beyond North America, the U.K. and Australia, and (geo)political science / international relations all qualify as “traditional, real subjects” that demand foreign interaction on a professional level.

Any university with rigorous, respected social sciences programs – and this includes UMass – will usually strongly recommend, if not require, some foreign language proficiency. How is a global education requirement “bad”, if one wants to participate (or compete, depending upon your view) in economics, which is totally interdependent with other nations, and their respective economies?

To be frank, I feel that foreign language requirements in some major programs have actually relaxed over the years. If your daughter, or you, prefer UConn’s more lenient standards over UMass, that is your choice. I personally think in those proposed areas, she’d be exposed to a more sophisticated curriculum at UMass. In any case, I wouldn’t blame the school for maintaining some basic rigor in its prerequisites.

4

First, let me just refocus this thread on the immediate question at hand: Suppose I want a degree that says “B.S., Economics, UMass Amherst.” How do I achieve this while studying the least foreign language possible (without regard to whether that should be my goal).

However, let me respond to @Halcyon77 and @anhydrite. I agree that educated people should be at least bilingual. It disturbs me greatly that in every other first-world country, all high school students graduate bilingual. In non-English-speaking countries, the students learn English, and in England they learn some other language. Only the U.S. allows its most talented high school students to graduate monolingual, and it’s just wrong. A few years ago I was in France, and I was mortified that the teenagers who sell tickets and soda at the Eiffel Tower can all speak my language, and I can’t speak theirs (and I got through French 3H in high school). I am highly educated (Ivy undergrad degree from back in the '80s), and I am personally ashamed that I am fluent only in English. I have made it a personal goal to become fluent in another language during my lifetime. With that said, two responses …

First, the view that everyone should learn a second language is based on the assumption that every reasonably smart person can do it. I breezed through BC Calculus in high school with an A+ and a 5 on the AP test, while spending less than five minutes a day on the homework and talking to my friends during every class. On the other hand, I put in an enormous effort in French just to get a B. I’m pretty smart, but French is hard for me while calculus is easy. No one is arguing that every social scientist needs to pass BC Calc. (Well, I personally believe that a 5 on the BC Calc AP test should be a universal, mandatory, never-to-be-waived-under-any-circumstances requirement for a high school diploma, but I realize I’m in the minority view.) Colleges have all sorts of watered down ways for social scientists to get through math (e.g., courses called “Calculus for social scientists”), but there’s never an easy, watered-down option for foreign language. People who are good at math, but for whom learning foreign language just isn’t their thing, really seem get abused when schools are setting core requirements.

Second, regarding the view that economists need to understand the world economy, there are several responses. One is that almost all economic data is available in English. Is it wrong for a student of the Chinese economy not to be able to read the data in Chinese? Absolutely. Is it possible to read the data in English anyway? Also absolutely. But another response is that one doesn’t necessarily major in economics just to become an “economist”, or, for that matter, to prepare for any particular career. (I actually dislike the vocational turn that college has taken in the last 20 years; it used to be about broadening your horizons, and now it’s about “getting a job.”) There is a view (which used to be the mainstream view of education, and is now only held by a few diehards like me) that the purpose of education is not to prepare someone for a job, any more than pull-ups in gym class are intended to prepare you for the day when you will have to lift yourself to safety from the bottom of a pit. We make people do pull-ups, run laps, swim, etc., because we have a general belief that strong bodies are better than weak bodies. Just the same, we make people learn hard stuff in college because we believe that a trained and well-practiced mind is better than one that has become soft from disuse, imprecise thinking, and humanities courses. It’s possible to major in economics and then do something else for a living. You still get the benefit of working with abstract models of economic behavior, which will sharpen your thinking for whatever you want to do next. This is so, regardless of whether you can or want to make a living applying these models to real world data that might be available only in other languages.

Anyway, I realize that the language requirement is what it is. I just have to believe that there must be some students at UMass who don’t like it either and have probably figured their way around it. I guess the 6-credit-with-some-cultural-courses is a decent option, but I was just interested if the requirement was as serious as it looks on paper.

5

Thanks for the well-reasoned response, @Parent829‌. I am personally in favor of language requirements for humanities and social sciences. And I had thought of mentioning the following in my original post: one of my parents had foreign language requirements at the doctoral level for a natural science many years ago. This requirement has since lapsed, I believe.

Now clearly the latter doesn’t apply to your daughter, nor to undergrad. Yet one could apply your economics reasoning, sans foreign language, to this requirement as well. Why would one do languages in any quant-related field? Truthfully, that language requirement did prove beneficial in the career, though maybe it wasn’t apparent at first. And without even bringing in some of your other social science major proposals for UMass, yes, economics can certainly be completed in English, yet… to achieve some traction at a higher level in economics, it is hard to imagine one’s professional potential wouldn’t be enhanced (and certainly for the future). This, in addition to competing with other peer institutional requirements, probably informs the thinking re: Umass’ requirements. I’d imagine they’re similar to many other selective publics.

One could also argue the converse – a great deal of academic literature is published in English (not just economics), to the exclusion sometimes of other countries’ primary language(s). Yet I don’t feel this is really a sufficient justification to drop language proficiency. I think it’s more an indulgence afforded the U.S., primarily due to isolation, English as a common language, and perhaps some privilege thrown in as well. Even in Canada, bilingual proficiency is expected for many institutions. And in higher education especially, it is not uncommon for British citizens to be fluent in more than English (I mean this relative to Americans, not conclusively) – the proximity to polyglot experience strongly encourages such.

I am, however, actually sensitive to the learning challenge re: languages you provide; I for one certainly believe most people have different strengths, in terms of learning abilities, processing, etc. And there is a great deal of literature to back that up. First I’d ask: does your daughter actually replicate the same pattern as your strengths / challenges? If so, and if you feel it is sufficiently detrimental, I would consider contacting some program officials and discussing the difficulties to see if there is a workaround. My experience with the major institutions I’ve been involved with (public and private) is, if you make an effort to get some additional help, alternatives, etc., there can often be some other solution. I didn’t get so much of an impression on this in your first post, but now there is a more robust picture.

And if her challenges are not so severe, it may just be a case of “chin up / do your best.”

If the school otherwise fits, I’m also a proponent of recommending the most challenging academic curriculum a student can handle. And if she applied early, clearly there is an affinity for UMass. It may be worth discussing with program advisors or faculty. Best of luck-

6

@anhydrite: thank you for your well-reasoned response. I think we agree entirely … except as to one point:

I don’t agree that UMass made the foreign language requirement this onerous out of a belief that people will be better economists if they learn a foreign language. While it’s certainly true that people who can speak two languages will be better economists, the requirement applies to the entire social/behavioral sciences school. Plenty of undergrads can’t figure out what they want to do but want to finish their bachelor’s degree with a real, traditional subject, so they major in psych or soc., and these people also have to take a foreign language, because they’re in the behavioral/social science school. They are made better for doing so, but the rationale for requiring foreign language is far more attenuated (at least in psych) than it is for econ. Most likely, this was someone’s pet issue, and he or she simply got power hungry when given a chance to control the curriculum. The result is that people who really wanted to major in a real, traditional academic discipline may feel that they’re being shunted to pseudo-academic majors in a different school, like communications or “human studies”.

By the way, there is no learning disability issue here, either on my part or D’s part. Languages don’t come as easily to me as math does, but of course I could have learned French if it had been important enough to me, and D will too. (And, by analogy, I’ll make the following comment: if anyone reading this has ever said, “I’m not a math person,” yes, you too could have learned calculus if you had tried hard enough; you just didn’t feel like it any more than I felt like learning French.)

7

I also think we agree on most points. You are welcome. I’d say our minor quibble would be thus:

I’m just a bit skeptical that the UMass requirements are really out of line with other large, public flagships of its relative caliber. While it could be due to a power-hungry administrator or legislator, it could also be a result of many other factors. Since many higher-achieving high school students already have language credits under their belts, they may simply not feel it so acutely onerous as your particular (and understandable) position. Especially so if they want to appeal to applicants who may be considering other, more selective institutions.

Another factor could be that UMass, like many major publics with reduced state funding, see some language requirements as a sort of contemporary analog for attracting more international OOS full-pay students. Most of the internationals need to become proficient in English (TOEFL, etc.) to gain admission, so why not balance the scales a little, with at least token efforts in many majors to get Americans to comprehend a foreign language?

Truthfully, I feel it would take more stringent requirements, having both attended and taught at large research institutions myself, to get the bulk of Americans (at least those who grew up monolingual) speaking a second (or third) language fluently – with perhaps an exemption for very prestigious schools, where international fluency can be more de rigeur. But this is not intended to denigrate your challenge; it’s just an observation.

I do now understand from your last post better what you mean by a requirement in the real, traditional disciplines. I think you’re saying that the language requirement in a more heavyweight discipline like economics becomes a sort of de facto weeding sequence. If you don’t cut it, well, there’s always the human ecology school, etc. I think that’s not an unrealistic assessment. I can’t attest to its veracity, but it may be the case.

Foreign language or not, I wanted to mention this very interesting case:

I think it was in the last year or two, where a UMass grad student in economics poked major holes in some reigning sacred cows in one influential model of contemporary economic theory, espoused by a couple of Harvard profs, I believe. I don’t have the articles handy (probably easy to find), but the grad student found some major flaws in the data, and had the courage to challenge publicly. At first I think he was summarily dismissed, but with persistence, he turned out to be correct. It was a brave thing to do, and he was rather modest about it.

8

Lol Anhydrite, you seem to be more verbose than myself! To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a compliment or not since, in my opinion, advanced words an foreign phrases should only be used for precision, as well as to introduce concepts that have no equal in English. Especially your use of archaic grammar such as, “I’d say our minor quibble would be thus”, as well as the use of the french phrase “de ri·gueur”.(Both of these truly made me smile) Aside from smiling it also made me guess you would be throwing off half the audience, but perhaps the audience you where aiming for was just the OP. Anyway…I agree with you that all of use have no idea how to confirm why UMass does what it does… but… perhaps it is better to take it how it is. (or not!) Good Luck

9

My son is in the process of getting an Economics Degree in the School of Behavioral science. I would not get too concerned about the foreign language requirement. What they require is 5 course global education sequence of which only 2 semesters have to be in a foreign language at a level above what you placed at when you arrived - or you can start a new language from the beginning. The other three classes can be selected from a broad number of loosely related classes from many areas (economics, sociology, political science, history, etc) so long as they are somewhat associated with your language. (classes taught in English about European economics or world literature can count for example…) The global education requirement also be satisfied with some study abroad programs.

Languages are not my son’s strong suit but he survived two semesters of intro Spanish and then did the rest of his global studies classes in English.

You do have the option to satisfy the requirement with 5 semester of foreign language but it is not required. The options are well documented here.

http://www.umass.edu/sbs/global-education-requirement

10

Thanks @newengland2012‌. That was kind of the conclusion I was coming to.