The Value of Foreign Language Education

Foreign Language Education has a long history at American institutions of higher education. However, when faced with an increasingly vocational slant to learning, enrollment in foreign language courses has declined sharply since the early 1960s. By asking American university faculty their perceptions of the role of foreign language education in the modern university, this work seeks a path situate foreign language programs more firmly in the fiber of higher learning. The study described in these pages is profoundly influenced by the sociological works of Pierre Bourdieu and Alfred Bandura and suggests that critical inquiry begins with understanding the space foreign language programs inhabit. The work concludes with the sketch of an emerging model for reconceptualizing the role of foreign language education within higher education.