Why EALC Budget Cuts Matter to All of Berkeley
There has been a lack of transparency in the apportioning of budget cuts. This problem is not EALC's alone. Severe budget cuts like these, dealt in relative silence, can destroy any department, and may happen to any department in the future.
Countless students' academic futures are at stake. Such deep budget cuts to EALC will ultimately hurt Berkeley as a whole, and for years to come.
SHORT-TERM IMPACT
Most of EALC's language teaching is not for its own students but is a service to the university at large. EALC can no longer provide this service to the university.
As of the coming academic year, students in departments outside of the College of Letters & Sciences who need Japanese, Chinese or Korean will be unable to study these languages at Berkeley. Such students will need to go elsewhere to complete their requirements.
Students immediately affected include those in:
- The Haas School of Business
- The College of Chemistry
- The Graduate School of Education
- The College of Engineering
- College of Environmental Design (including departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City and Regional Planning)
- School of Information
- Graduate School of Journalism
- Law School (Boalt Hall)
- College of Natural Resources (including Departments of Agricultural and Resource Economics; Environmental Science, Policy, and Management; Nutritional Science; and Plant and Microbial Biology)
- School of Public Health
- Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy
- School of Social Welfare.
East Asian languages are among the most in-demand languages on campus. Prospective undergraduate and graduate students alike may reconsider their choice of Berkeley in favor of schools with more reliable funding for the teaching of languages critical to their education.
In addition, this can directly affect job competitiveness. See here for an EECS example.
LONG-TERM IMPACT
If the cuts remain into the near future, EALC may have to limit enrollment to EALC students only.
Students in departments in which the study of East Asia is essential, such as Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Geography, and History, may not be able to enroll. Undergraduate students may not be able to fulfill requirements, and graduate students may no longer be able to complete MA/PhD work in such departments.
This affects UC Berkeley's ability to offer a curriculum that is truly inter-disciplinary and global in perspective.
Cuts to language study, particularly Asian languages, undermine Berkeley's policy of building diversity into the curriculum. Foreign language study, particularly Asian languages on a campus whose student body is approximately 45% of Asian descent, should be a central part of any larger diversity curriculum.
And of course the constituency of these languages extends across the entire student body. Cutting language classes to this extent seriously undermines Berkeley's stated mission to be a global university preparing a well-educated and properly skilled citizenry.
Finally, the cuts in language teaching will seriously jeopardize Berkeley's status as a U.S. Department of Education funded Title VI Language Resource Center – an important source of funding for the university. This seriously affects our ability to compete with other universities, especially private and Ivy league univerisities with more stable funding.