Muradás-Taylor, B. orcid.org/0000-0001-7275-6016 and Taylor, P. (2024) ‘Cold spots’ in language degree provision in England. The Language Learning Journal, 52 (1). pp. 92-103. ISSN 0957-1736
Abstract
People have been raising the alarm about a language education crisis in the UK, particularly in England, for twenty years. Yet the crisis continues: the number of young people studying languages at school is low, especially in socioeconomically less-privileged areas. University programmes – particularly in universities with below average entry tariffs – are closing, but we do not understand the regional impact of this decline. This paper fills that gap by identifying ‘cold spots’: areas of the country where no universities offer language degrees. The programming language R was used to analyse the location of universities at various entry tariffs, and areas of the country further than a commutable distance of 60 km were identified. Large cold spots were found in the North, East and South West of England for universities offering languages at below average entry tariff, with the cold spot in the South West also present at higher entry tariffs. This is a social justice issue, since most students attend university close to home, with students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and some ethnic minority backgrounds more likely to commute. This leads to a key strategic recommendation: to open language degree programmes at one lower tariff university in each cold spot.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Higher education; university; social justice; widening participation; entry tariff |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > Linguistics & Phonetics (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Sep 2023 10:58 |
Last Modified: | 31 Jan 2024 14:25 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09571736.2023.2257705 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:203729 |
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