Language skills are critically important to maximising Australia’s capacity to participate most effectively in a globalised world. This is true for individuals, and for the nation.

A major responsibility for enhancing the nation’s languages ability rests with the university sector. Not only do universities train the teachers, but it is increasingly through the universities that students gain (or not) the linguistic and cultural knowledge and understanding that they, and the nation, need in order to participate and contribute most fully as global citizens.

Over the past three decades, the teaching and learning of languages other than English (LOTE) in Australian universities have been the subject of growing alarm, with research conducted by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and others highlighting the dire need for action. In 2007, the Group of Eight issued an important report summing up the state of languages education in Australia. Entitled ‘Languages in Crisis’, the report highlighted how critical the situation had already become: in 1997 there were 66 languages offered at Australian universities, but just ten years on, only 29 remained. Both Asian and non-Asian languages are affected by this ‘crisis’; of these surviving languages nine are offered at only one university, and only seven are well-represented.

In addition to this massive decrease in the number of languages taught, the tertiary languages sector faces the following challenges:

• uneven student enrolments across languages and universities;
• low retention and high attrition rates;
• inconsistent student pathways and expected outcomes;
• erosion of senior leadership positions in many universities and increased casualisation and juniorisation of staff; and
• negative public attitudes to the critical importance of language learning.