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The Daily Cardinal Est. 1892
Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Language credits an unnecessary hassle

""Wait, what?"" I exclaimed to my academic advisor with shock when he informed me I needed to take three semesters of a foreign language in order to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree. That was three years ago, and only now has the wake created from that terrifying discovery finally deteriorated.  

 

Classes that tainted my college career could have been completely avoided if I had known that I needed to take one more class in high school. Fortunately, during my freshman year of college, an advisor informed me of the classes I needed to take, and I was at least able to get the annoying breadth requirement out of the way by my senior year.  

 

Yet, some students reading this article are discovering for the first time they too have foreign language breadth requirements that have yet to be fulfilled. It is a stipulation that has a profound impact on a student in the college of Letters and Sciences. 

 

To satisfy a B.S. degree, students must complete three years of a particular foreign language while in high school. A B.A. degree requires four years. However, if students did not take this number in high school and plan on graduating from L&S, they have to take three or four semesters at the college level. 

 

To fulfill this foreign language breadth requirement, students are caught in a dilemma: either take the classes freshman year and waste valuable time that should be used to help a student find a particular field of interest, or put it off until senior year and hope they pass without destroying their GPA. 

 

Since graduate schools and employers place more emphasis on a student's GPA from the last 60 college credits than the first 60, it is wise to conquer the foreign language breadth requirement sooner rather than later. L&S academic advisor Robert Nellis agrees. 

 

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""We don't want students to wait until their last semester to find that they are short breadth requirements that would delay their graduation,"" Nellis said. ""We encourage students that have any questions to contact their advisors."" 

 

Creating such a hassle for students with these requirements begs the question: Why do they exist at all? 

 

Educators will argue a foreign language enhances reasoning, comprehension and retention skills among students—skills that will help graduates in their future careers. Yet it is rather presumptuous to expect students to gain anything from a class they have virtually no interest in.  

 

If students hate going to the class and hate hearing their TA spend the complete lecture speaking entirely in a foreign language, chances are pretty good they will not get much out of the class. Chances are even higher that forcing a student to spend numerous hours on such a dreadful topic takes away from what a student learns in classes. 

 

One objective found in the undergraduate academic catalog reads, ""The liberal education attends to the practical aspirations of students—attaining jobs and pursuing meaningful career paths upon graduation."" Yet foreign language is neither practical nor aspiring to many students, as many will likely never use it again.  

 

Furthermore, it is widely understood the best time to learn a second language is during childhood—which is reason enough to make learning a foreign language optional, not mandatory to L&S students. 

 

It is unfortunate that some students, while in high school, never knew of the college graduation requirements at Madison and many are now royally kicking themselves for not taking one or two extra years of a foreign language, as they would have averted a major pitfall at this university.  

 

Such requirements will likely never change, so it is in a student's best interest to get breadth requirements out of the way early in a college career. For more information, contact the L&S Advising Center at 262-1849. 

 

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