| |
| | The Chronicle: March 9, 2001: A University Plans to Promote Languages by Killing Its Languages Department |
 | | Face it, says the president of Drake University, foreign-language instruction in the United States, long plagued by plummeting enrollments, is in a state of "national malaise," and all those grammarians and Goethe gurus pontificating at the front of the classroom are part of the problem, not the solution. |
 | | Maxwell's decision may seem, in one sense it is completely rational: If you want to avoid running afoul of the American Association of University Professors' guidelines, one of the only ways you can fire a tenured professor who hasn't, say, violated the law is by cutting an entire program. |
 | | Maxwell hopes, with foreign families, the students will return to Drake and sit down with the university's soon-to-be hired "second-language-acquisition specialist," who will advise undergraduates on the best way to build on what they've learned. |
| chronicle.com /free/v47/i26/26a01401.htm (2170 words) |
|