This highly regrettable trend has been reported in American media for the past couple of decades. It began as a response on the part of the academic establishment to the increasing demands from the marketplace to provide “job ready” graduates which, given the extremely high costs of an university education, received rapid, wide-spread support from the students.galaxyrocker wrote: ... I do think we're seeing a trend where universities no longer view themselves as giving students a well-rounded education, but instead provide specialized job training (which saddens me, but that's a different story), and I suspect that we'll slowly start to see language requirements fade out.
Previously, employers had been willing to hire either (a) university graduates with no experience whatsoever, or (b) professionals possessing experience that was in the same field, but not an exact match to the job requirements, and to accept that there would be a learning period during which the employer would be required to “subsidize” (in appearance only) the salary of the newly-hired employee. I say “in appearance only” because (a) in hiring a recent graduate, the employer added a new employee to his workforce possessing the latest theoretical knowledge in the field whom he could easily mold and integrate into his team, and (b) in hiring someone with experience in the field, he could benefit from the cross-pollination from the industry at large. This was a genuine a “win-win” formula that had proved its merits for literally centuries.
This situation began to change in the early 1990’s when employers, seeking an “immediate return on their investments” in all areas of business, including that of manpower, began to require that job applicants possess “exactly” the requirements to match their job descriptions, despite how little sense this actually made (we should bear in mind that most people charged with the responsibility of hiring new employees are ill-trained for such a responsibility, have many other things to do in their truly busy days, are under immense pressure to perform, and devote rather begrudgingly very little genuine effort to the new employee selection process; that is, their primary goal is to simplify their own lives and, if being rigid helps relieve the pressure they’re under, well, it’s just too bad for the job applicants).
The arrival of increasing numbers of university graduates in the job market, coupled with the increasing mobility of the professional workforce, generated a “buyer’s market” for employers seeking professionally-trained personnel. Recent graduates had difficulties finding employment in their fields of study, experienced employers had their curriculum vitae rejected because their experience was “not exactly” what the employers were looking for, and the pressure on the universities to produce “job ready” graduates steadily increased.
The vast majority of the universities themselves were, and remain to this day, “in competition” for student enrollments. In the blink of an eye, with a view to maintaining or increasing enrollments, the universities began to emphasize the “job-producing” aspects of their curricula and deemphasizing the humanities, including those of foreign language instruction, which most employers viewed as providing “no immediate return on their investments” in manpower. Game, set, and match!
EDITED:
Tinkering.
Typos, despite the tinkering!
). Of course the teaching degrees are much less difficult than the philology or translation ones (I looked at the plans rather carefully), but the competition is still big. Faculties offering degrees in English, German, French, or Spanish can choose their students from a large crowd. The less popular languages have different entry requirements of course.
