Learning Hindi is extremely practical. Hindi is the fourth-most spoken language in the world. The majority of its speakers live in India, the largest democracy in the world and a rising economic powerhouse, where, contrary to popular belief, most people do not speak English. If I had not spoken Hindi when I studied in India for three months last summer, I would not have been able to explain to rickshaw drivers how to get to my house (the town where I stayed did not have functional addresses), go grocery shopping or tell off the dirty old man who propositioned me in a restaurant in the middle of the Great Thar Desert.
Because of Hindi’s strategic importance, the U.S. State Department has declared it a Super Critical Needs Language and offers Americans large incentives to learn it. For the past four years, the State Department has sent groups of undergraduate and graduate students to study Hindi in Jaipur, India, on full scholarship during the summer. I was in India last summer on a Critical Language Scholarship. The government paid for everything from my tuition, to my plane ticket, to my meals. It even gave me a stipend. The State Department also offers Critical Language Scholarships in 12 other languages as well as financing for additional language study through the Boren Awards.
Once students learn high-demand languages, they receive advantages in hiring for government positions. If you speak a Super Critical Needs or a Critical Needs Language, the FBI will pay more attention to your special agent application, the State Department will give you extra points in its hiring formula and the CIA will offer you a hiring bonus of up to $35,000.
Given that the U.S. government is in such desperate need of speakers of Super Critical Needs and Critical Needs Languages, more Princeton students should take the time to learn them. We are academically gifted citizens who attend an institution that has one of the best public policy programs in the country and declares itself to be “in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations.”
Unfortunately, Princeton does not provide sufficient resources for acquiring these languages. Princeton only offers courses in seven of the State Department’s 21 Super Critical Needs and Critical Needs Languages. Students can study Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian and Turkish, but not Dari, Urdu, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Cantonese, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Pastho, Punjabi, Tajik, Turkmen or Uzbek. Of the seven languages on offer, students only have sufficient resources to attain fluency in five. The Turkish and Hindi programs both have only one professor and offer only two years of courses (all of which are 100-level). There are no more Hindi courses that I can take at Princeton, and I only began to study the language last June.
I often hear administrators, faculty and alumni lament that fewer students go into public service than they did during the days of yore. I remember attending a dinner last fall where journalism professor and Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas reflected on how it used to be common for graduates of Ivy League institutions to spend a few years working in the military or civil service.
Our low participation rate in government service is, in part, the fault of us students. I know many a Tiger who is easily wooed by a nice Wall Street salary. That said, our educational environment does not do enough to help students down the path of public service. It is becoming increasingly important for bureaucrats, intelligence analysts and soldiers to speak foreign languages. If Princeton wants to turn out graduates who serve in the public sector, it must help us acquire the skill sets that the public sector demands.
Haley White is a sophomore from Chatham, N.J. She can be reached at hewhite@princeton.edu.
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