Penn State Requiring Two Years Of Foreign Language Study

4-30-97
University Park, Pa. -- Attention, high school classes of 2001 and beyond: If you want to go to Penn State, no matter what major you choose, you'll need to take at least two years of foreign language study in high school.

Penn State's Faculty Senate voted to impose the new requirement at its April meeting. Currently, foreign language study in high school is required only for B.A. degrees in the Eberly College of Science, the College of the Liberal Arts, and the College of Arts and Architecture.

The change will affect only students who graduate from high school in May 2001 or in subsequent years. For students who don't meet the requirement, but who otherwise would have been offered admission to Penn State, the Senate offered an alternate route. They can still be admitted, but with a "deficiency in a foreign/second language" that they must remove within two years, or before graduation, whichever comes first.

University President Graham B. Spanier spoke in favor of the new requirement. Spanier, who has visited 30 high schools over the past 18 months, told the Senate there is strong support in the high schools for a foreign language requirement. The schools look to Penn State for leadership in setting high educational standards, Spanier said.

In the increasingly international markets that Pennsylvania-based and other U.S. firms now operate in, Spanier said that proficiency in foreign languages will give the edge to students who "desperately want to be prepared for real jobs by the time they graduate." Spanier said he has heard this repeatedly from the CEOs of the firms he has visited.

Currently, more than 90 percent of first-year Penn State students already meet the new requirement. To address the issue of those who will want to attend Penn State after May 2001 but who won't have met the requirement, the language of the new requirement was structured to allow the admission of students with a deficiency in language -- provided they make up the deficiency within a specified time -- rather than impose a strict admissions requirement and completely exclude those who haven't met it.

The Faculty Senate's Committee on Admissions, Records, Scheduling and Student Aid developed the language requirement after meeting with Spanier in August 1996 and subsequently seeking comment from administrators at Commonwealth campuses and other Penn State locations. In the summer of 1996, Spanier had asked the committee to add a foreign language requirement.

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Contacts: Alan Janesch (814) 865-7517 (office) axj12@psu.edu
Christy Rambeau (814) 865-7517 (office) cmr7@psu.edu