English speakers learning German gain more from learning another language than the ability to speak the language to its native speakers. I know I've benefited from learning German. As my German teacher said, "I dare anyone to learn a language and not learn anything about its culture or history and more."
Eliminating teaching a language due to economic reasons is extremely shortsighted. What point is a school if it doesn't actually teach a fairly major language?
See, this is a great reason to discourage people from learning German - you don't even need to know the language of the people you are doing business with. To the chopping block!
Oh wait, no. There are lots of german speakers in the US, but when German companies do business here, they send people who can speak English. Many (most?) US companies send employees to do business in other countries who speak the local language. It doesn't have to be even a fluent level of speech, but the gesture is well received on all ends. It is a general courtesy to at least attempt to have people who speak the language, as it signals other cultural awarenesses and sensitivities.
So is it a university's job to teach "German for business"?
Suppose the CS dept just did Exchange-server admin 101 - people would complain that it wasn't the proper role of a research university.
It seems that closing marginal depts, rather than just milking them as cash cows is a noble strategy - whatever the rest of the UVa management's actions
And does a university need to teach every subject?
Should UVa have (for example) an Oceanography dept? Is there much point in having a one person dept teaching Vulcanology when students would be better going somewhere else that specializes in it?
10 years ago the Netherlands started this process for their entire country. They picked the subjects that their universities did very well at and decided to close all the other research depts. There was no point in having the 100th ranked dept of tropical medicine when students could go somewhere else to learn that and you could use the money to support the worlds top dept in some other topic
It is a University's job to educate students, and to expose them to many fields of study that will give them a grounding for later study and inquiry. Basic instruction in many different topics at least gives the students enough grounding to ask good questions.
Education in foreign languages has far reaching affects on many aspects of life and cognitive abilities - this is a documented fact. The analogy to Exchange is broken in many, many ways. Training on a product only brings some level of competency in that product, as soon as it end-of-lifes, the skill is useless. Learning a language opens many doors, and I don't really see German being end-of-lifed any time soon.
Perhaps every university doesn't need a research oceanography unit, but it sure would be nice if they provided at least a teaching unit or two on those. Or do we just tell the students that would like to know something about it, "screw you, enroll at these other universities too, if you want to learn the basics of that.". I understand that in the Netherlands, this may not be that difficult, it is a small country, but in many places, e.g. the US where UVA is, the college where they kept an oceanography program is probably sever hundred, or even thousands of kilometers away.
Finally, the basics of subject do not need leading experts to teach them well. For low level classes, most people capable of getting a Ph.D and an interest in teaching can cover the material quite well. In fact, there is a whole school of thought (with pretty good evidence) that suggests that experts can't teach novices a subject very well at all. (this is known as the tacit or expert knowledge problem).
There is teaching and training. If they have a German lit prof who has published nothing for years, has no research students, no enrollment and the justification for keeping them is "learning German is useful" - then it makes sense to close the dept, buy some language tapes for the library and pay some German grad students to help. Rather than fire 10% of the post-docs in semi-conductor physics because you are making "across the board' cuts.
In europe where every city has a university this is easier and going to a particular university because of a particular course is more common. There are probably only 4-6 veterinary/dentistry ugrad programs in a country and perhaps half the places will have a medical school.
It's different in the US with in-state tuition, but at some point it is cheaper for the state to just say we aren't teaching Oceanography at U of Iowa - here is a scholarship to UCSD to cover the difference in tuition.
You can't ask questions of tapes, nor can you ask for extra help from said tapes the same way you can with an actual teacher. A tape base program can't tell you when you are mispronouncing, nor can it detect the areas you are confused in. There are benefits from having someone knowledgable around to teach.
I haven't taken a language class in a decade but last time I was there there was a lot more than speaking going on in class. It's one thing to speak a language (Google translator has you covered), it's quite another thing to know what to say.
