Cold spots in language degree provision in England: findings and actions - a talk by Prof. Becky Muradás-Taylor

All welcome to a public talk by Prof. Becky Muradás-Taylor on "Cold spots in language degree provision in England: findings and actions", hosted by the Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching at the University of Leeds.

Please register via this link. The link to the Teams meeting will be sent out to registered participants by email prior to the event.

About the talk

The number of UK universities offering languages to degree level fell from over 100 in the year 2000 to around 60 in 2013, with more closures announced since including Aston, Coventry, Edinburgh Napier, Huddersfield, Hull, Salford, Sunderland, and – in the news at the moment – Aberdeen.

This is perhaps no surprise given the challenging context: English is viewed as ‘enough’ given its status as a global language; technological advances make language study seem redundant; UK employers don’t seek or reward language skills; and more and more universities are financially precarious due to falling real-terms fees.

In this talk I will summarise my research which looks at language degree provision in England, as follows:

• The key findings from Muradás-Taylor (2023) which show that we have a widening participation crisis, with below average tariff universities generally not offering languages to degree level;
• The maps from Muradás-Taylor and Taylor (2023) showing cold spots in the North, East and South West of England more than 60 km from a below average tariff university offering languages to degree level;
• New analysis looking for cold spots at the level of individual languages – given that we don’t have national oversight of which languages are offered at which universities, do we have issues with individual languages clustering in particular regions?

I will use these analyses to argue that the biggest issue in the sector is access to language degrees at lower tariff universities. At higher tariffs, the geographic spread is still good, for now. Students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to commute and are therefore excluded from studying languages – a social justice issue that should concern us all.

I will end the session with a focus on actions, presenting the Widening Participation Languages Network and facilitating a discussion on what we can do to reverse the decline.

About the speaker

Becky Muradás-Taylor is Professor of Languages and Linguistics and Director of Programme Design in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. She is the founder of the Widening Participation Languages Network, a special interest group of the University Council For Languages.