On Friday, UCLA’s Faculty Executive Committee heard the humanities department’s proposed area budget reductions that must be met for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Those plans will see the humanities trim $5.8 million, or roughly 12 percent for the coming year and administrators are being forced to make choices that will almost inevitably be to the detriment of our language and writing programs.
Entry-level language programs cost the humanities department almost $2.3 million annually, putting them at the top of the list of disposable entities.
This board acknowledges the Faculty Executive Committee’s innocence in these difficult circumstances.
Even so, we cannot remain silent. Although the board realizes that languages and writing programs are cut simply because there is no other option, a humanities degree without strongly integrated writing and language programs is not a degree at all.
Humanities students choose their path knowing full well that it is not without perils. However, there are essentially two practical skills every UCLA humanities student can expect to graduate with: the ability to write well and some faculty for another language.
In the last six months we’ve seen drastic reductions in UCLA’s writing programs, and from the looks of things, the same will soon be true of our language curricula.
Members of the committee have been clear that cutting the foreign language requirement at UCLA is not an option on the table. Instead, administrators are considering the reduction or elimination of entry-level classes in these fields.
Noting the added “flexibility” that would come with looser restrictions on where such credits could be earned, the committee pointed to community colleges and high schools as renewed options, conveniently ignoring the already tremendous stress being put on such institutions by growing student demand and insufficient state funding. We’d prefer the injury of the cuts without the insult of being deluded. Most humanities students graduate with the assurance of debt and without the earning potential to justify it. But by cutting these departments and programs, we encroach upon one of the few quantifiable, marketable skills humanities students develop in their undergraduate education.
Humanities students are not the only ones who will suffer because of these cuts. In today’s increasingly global economy, foreign language proficiency is an essential component of a competitive education. Language programs are a resource shared across departments and majors ““ nearly everyone enrolls, from economics to English students.
We cannot underestimate the importance of strongly integrated writing and language programs to a humanities degree. By cutting them, we are not trimming fat from our humanities programs ““ we are gutting them.