Languages Without Language Faculty
Back in 2001, Drake University did what to many language professors was nothing less than horrific: It announced that foreign language instruction wasn’t working, killed its language departments, and got rid of the instructors, including those with tenure. Drake’s president promised some sort of new approach, based on study abroad and individualized online instruction. Language professors at Drake and elsewhere were outraged and, noting that the university hadn’t figured out what it would put in place, predicted that the university would do terrible harm to language study and the humanities.
