Introduction

Undergraduate language programmes in England: A widening participation crisis

“…[…] But, a year on from graduation and numerous job applications later, he was still unable to move on from the job he had while studying at university’; another said ‘I studied Chinese […] I’m stuck doing a crap job while everyone tells me that China is the future and I could be earning loads’. The other side of this is that clerical and admin roles requiring language skills go unfilled (Coussins and Harding-Esch, 2018: 2); while this might appear contradictory, it is consistent with the claim by Foreman-Peck and Wang (2014: 7) that wages for language skills are low. It appears that the benefit of language skills is more apparent to economists than to young people or their employers.…”

“…UK businesses have tended to rely on EU labour for language skills (Holmes, 2018). Even so, the lack of linguistic and cultural knowledge in the UK is estimated to cost 3.5% of GDP in lost export trade (Foreman-Peck and Wang, 2014): English may be ‘vital for success,’ but speaking only English is ‘a huge disadvantage’ (Coussins and Harding-Esch, 2018: 2). As Van Parijs (2004: 130) explains, ‘Anglophones […] face competition on their home labour markets with everyone else in the world, while having no real access to those labour markets in which another language remains required.’ And the effects are not just economic: ‘Learning additional languages facilitates access to multiple cultures and worldviews […].…”