All over Europe, language programmes at universities are facing increasing pressure due to budget cuts and short-sighted notions of profitability. Many programmes have been discontinued or downgraded, the number of contractual academic staff is decreasing, many individual languages are no longer on offer where they used to be taught. Only occasionally are new offers being created.

We would like to get a more systematic picture of these dynamics in our project

“Closing and opening doors: Universities restructuring their language training programs”.

If you have knowledge of any cases of restructuring (in your own institution or others you are familiar with), we would be very grateful if you could help us document them and fill in our online questionnaire.

The questionnaire is in English, but you can also reply in any European language. We will handle any translations necessary for our data.

We are interested in closures or openings which occurred from the year 2000 onwards or which are currently ongoing or planned. The closures and openings we are interested in include academic degree programs (BA, MA, minors, majors, PhD) in languages or linguistics, literatures and cultural studies, translation or interpreting studies, and language teaching offered in university language centers. We are interested in structural changes that have affected any language. Our project is limited to European universities, including institutions in non-EU countries.

Please also share this message with colleagues in your networks, especially those in universities, cities or countries other than your own, and help us get a more complete picture.