Across the United States, there has been an explosion in the number of students interested in Arabic. At the University of Wisconsin, all four sections of first semester Arabic filled up so quickly many students had to be turned away. Why can't the African Languages and Literature Department offer additional sections? To make a long story short: funding.
The Art History Department would like to add an Islamic art history scholar to their department in order to meet an ever-increasing interest in a field where the department is lacking some experience. Will they get the additional position? It depends on funding.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11 there has been an enormous increase in the interest in both Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. On the postsecondary level, however, there is still a shortfall in the number of specialists in these fields. The 9/11 Commission reported that there were only six undergraduates nationally in 2002 who received Arabic undergraduate degrees. The National Middle East Language Resource Center reported that even now there are only 40 who graduate annually in the United States with fully competent Arabic language ability, and that is an optimistic estimate.
The federal government has also recognized the shortage of trained speakers in languages such as Hindi, Russian, Chinese and Persian. With programs such as the International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs, the Department of Education budget for fiscal year 2007 will provide $106.8 million for the development of "expertise in foreign languages and area and international studies."
While studying Arabic does have applications in the government and private sector (and can be very lucrative), there is more to learning a foreign language or majoring in International Relations than money. Part of a liberal education is broad-based learning having a broad-based background in various subjects, whether your major is chemistry, engineering or anthropology.
Once we leave UW, we will have to draw on all parts of our liberal arts education, not just our knowledge from our major. While it may seem that those three credits of biology are useless to French majors, an understanding of the environment may prove critical, especially in Francophone Africa. When electrical engineers have to explain to their children in 10 years about 9/11, those classes in Islam and political science may help in breaking down a complex situation to a level that children can understand. Personally, I know that chemistry became extremely important while using Arabic in Iraq, and I was thankful that I was forced to take it.
The UW-Madison Strategic Plan assesses the needs of UW "to sustain and strengthen our position of preeminence in research and higher education." Two major facets of this Strategic Plan are "Promoting Research" and "Advancing Learning." Both research and learning at UW go hand-in-hand, and this provides an academic environment that most universities cannot provide. When I ask questions in class, often the answer is a direct result of research that the professor has done. While there is often too much of a focus on research at UW, this research benefits us in the classroom as well as UW's reputation and budget.
The problem is the fact that the research and academic funds do not always go where they need to go. The Medical School and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences receive much more state and federal dollars (29.7 percent and 16.1 percent respectively in 2003-04) as a result of the types of research that they carry out. Fields such as the humanities and social sciences may never receive research dollars in those amounts, partially due to the fact that much research in these fields is not as expensive. In areas in which this university is lacking (such as Middle East and South Asian studies in various departments), there should be more funding put into these areas so that we can have a more well-rounded education, especially in areas in which few Americans in general have a good grounding.
By bringing in faculty and more research funds into areas where this university is lacking, UW will be able to promote the Strategic Plan's "Amplifying Wisconsin Idea" in which we at UW share our learning with the state, country and world. There are serious shortcomings in some disciplines that are in demand by the student body, and there is little funding to fulfill these shortcomings. How then can a graduate of UW take his or her learning from this campus and "address societal issues through multidisciplinary approaches" when UW will not fund the learning that students want and the state and country so desperately need?
Maybe instead of hanging up signs that tell us to "Think. Respect." UW should ask the state for more funding so that it can teach us how to do just that.
Jeff Carnes ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in linguistics.
