The Modern Language Association predicted the number of 2012-13 job openings in postsecondary foreign language instruction will exceed comparable English positions for the first time in 18 years, according to the association’s December Job Information List.
The report predicted the number of foreign language openings will be 10.5 percent higher than in the previous year, while the number of English positions will decrease by 3.6 percent.
The number of foreign language and English positions has been increasing since the 2010-11 academic year, after decreasing for the three years prior, according to the report. The MLA’s prediction indicates the number of English positions will level off while the number of foreign language positions should continue to climb this year.
Most MLA openings in the past three years have been listed after the December report is issued.
The increase in foreign language jobs at universities is an indication “that institutions recognize the importance of multilingualism in students’ educations,” the report states.
“We’re a little agoraphobic as a country, so it’s a positive prospect that the MLA predictions suggests a potential shift toward greater globalization,” said Stephen Foley ’74 P’04 P’07, department director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of English. But he added, “I don’t think we could make any predictions about long-term trends until we have more data.”
Karen Newman, professor of comparative literature, also said more data would be necessary to determine “if this is an ongoing trend or a blip.” But in response to “globalization of economic and financial markets,” there exists a growing consensus that university students should study multiple languages, she said.
Language course enrollment at Brown increased by approximately 8 percent between 2000 and 2012, wrote Elsa Amanatidou, director of the Center for Language Studies and senior lecturer in classics, in an email to The Herald. French, Spanish, Chinese, Italian and Arabic are the five most frequently studied languages at Brown, she wrote.
Students at the University “want to become not just translingual, but transcultural in their experience,” Amanatidou said.
“The students at Brown are not ignoring the fact that we live in a global society,” she said. “They actually give the word ‘global citizen’ its rightful meaning.”
The MLA data does not necessarily indicate there is a greater postsecondary interest in foreign literature or culture, Amanatidou said. Graduate students “are very well aware that they may be doing a PhD in literature, in French or in Spanish, but it is very likely that their first job will be teaching the language in a university or high school,” she said.
The increase in foreign language position offerings “may not mean these people are going to teach a lot more in their specialty area,” said Christopher Holmes Ph.D ’11.
Despite the upward prediction for the foreign language job market, “everyone is nervous,” said Anne-Caroline Sieffert GS. “Generally speaking, in the humanities, the direction of higher education in the U.S. and in the world is not going toward hiring more humanities students.”
Pursuing a Ph.D in English or comparative literature is “a lot of work for an uncertain future for not a large remuneration,” Newman said. “Faculty aren’t paid the way investment bankers are.”
Despite this knowledge of the job market, “90 percent of the case, you don’t do a Ph.D because you’re interested by money,” Sieffert said.
But in the face of rather bleak prospects, “Brown really does care about whether or not we get a job,” Holmes said. “Other places you’re sort of on your own.”
Brown’s language graduates tend to have an advantage in the job market, “because we’re very well-trained for teaching,” Sieffert said. A class in pedagogy is mandatory for language graduate students, and “that (course) has proven to be the reason why we were hired rather than another student,” Sieffert said.
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