Foreign language funding raised

President Bush announced on Thursday that he will request $114 million from Congress to expand foreign language training across the country. The National Security Language Initiative is designed to increase national security by raising the number of Americans learning strategic languages like Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi from kindergarten through the university level and into the workforce.

The announcement came during last week's State Department summit attended by 133 higher education leaders, including President Tilghman.

Bush described the plan as a "broad-gauged initiative" to bolster the country's defense, diplomacy and educational institutions, as well as encourage other countries to adopt more democratic governments.

"The best way to do that is to have those of us who understand freedom be able to communicate in the language of the people we're trying to help," he said. "In order to convince people we care about them, we've got to understand their culture and show them we care about their culture."

Bush's plan includes developing a recruitment program to encourage foreign language speakers to work for the federal government. A different program, which State Department officials said would be modeled after the Teach for America program started by Wendy Kopp '89, would place them as language teachers in an elementary, middle or high school.

The initiative will also fund a financial aid program for students who pledge to take a government job after graduation. Another component aims to produce 2,000 advanced speakers of critical languages by promoting graduate-level education.

Funds will also be used to increase the number of foreign language teachers and offer more international education training seminars. Other plans include providing additional Fulbright funding to recruit 300 foreign students to teach at U.S. colleges and expanded language immersion programs for Americans studying abroad.

Tilghman said she agreed with the administration's plans to strengthen international education.

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"I am a strong proponent of language training for Princeton students, so I would welcome any increase in encouragement for this," she said in an email, adding, "I came away thinking that the administration is aware of the problems that were created after September 11 [2001] with regard to the decline in the number of foreign students, and that they have made good progress in streamlining the visa procedures that led to the decline."

The two-day summit, co-hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, was designed to facilitate dialogue between government officials and education leaders. It focused on how to attract foreign students to study in the United States and how to encourage American students to study abroad.

Summit participants were invited from all 50 states and included representatives from public and private research institutions, community colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, historically black institutions, religiously-affiliated institutions and women's colleges. Among those attending were presidents from Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth and MIT.

"We tried to invite people from different kinds of colleges and institutions to represent the many forms of education across the United States," Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs spokesman Adam Meier said.

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In addition to Bush's address, the conference included remarks by Rice, Spellings, Under Secretary Karen Hughes and First Lady Laura Bush.

The summit comes in response to reports that U.S. colleges have experienced declines in the enrollment of foreign students in the past few years. A 2004-05 report compiled by the Institute of International Education revealed a drop of 1.3 percent from the previous school year.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. colleges have struggled to enroll foreign students because visas have become harder to obtain.

Some observers attribute the decline to perceived American hostility toward foreigners, which they say has discouraged some international students from applying.

During this same time period, other countries have increased efforts to attract foreign students.

Responses from University professors were cautiously optimistic.

"I strongly support the government's efforts," Near Eastern Studies lecturer and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Finn said. "Unfortunately, this initiative is something our country has needed for a long time, and I only wish it had been enacted sooner."

But East Asian Studies (EAS) professor Perry Link worried that students will receive training from unqualified teachers who haven't mastered the languages.

He said the Chinese language programs run by the U.S. government are among the weakest in the country, and he fears that politicians will waste resources by "throwing money at the problem."

"If the politicians turn to the U.S. government programs for their guidance, their millions of dollars will be largely wasted and the ability of Americans to speak Chinese will continue to lag way, way behind the abilities of Chinese people to speak English," Link said.

A similar approach to increasing American's knowledge of "strategic languages" was adopted during the Cold War. In response to competition from the Soviet Union, the U.S. government issued the National Defense Education Act in 1959 to increase funding for foreign language classes.

The University's language departments benefited from that expansion, EAS Chair David Howell said. In recent years, enrollment in EAS language and culture classes has increased, and he hopes this initiative will strengthen that trend.

EAS professors have already begun discussing expansion of current partnerships with New Jersey high schools' EAS teachers to focus more on language training, Howell said. He said he is encouraged that the Bush administration intends to reach out to younger students and hopes this will encourage those students to continue to study foreign languages in college.

Howell added that the proposed foreign language training is insufficient to bring the United States in line with other countries' attempts to attract international students.

"It's important to offer broad training in the culture, history and contemporary social and economic conditions of the non-Western world," he said. "I'd like to see the University push a bit harder, but of course it's ultimately up to the students themselves to embrace the opportunities to internationalize themselves."