In recent years, departmental restructuring has become a key component of universities’ attempts to cut costs. Tufts is no exception. Now, a student hoping to take a world language will see these effects firsthand. Students looking to study German, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, or Hebrew will no longer file under these respective departments when declaring their major. Instead, they will declare for a bachelor’s degree in International Literary and Cultural Studies (ILCS) along one of six tracks, each corresponding to a different foreign language.
The ILCS department was inaugurated in Fall 2024 with the goal of “teaching and researching world literatures, cinemas, and cultures,” according to the department’s website. Hebrew and Arabic were added to what began as the German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures department, bundling the study of six different languages into the new ILCS department.
Desire for cost efficiency and the ability to hire across programs were the greatest drivers of the restructuring, according to ILCS Chair Charles Inouye. Prior to its consolidation into an official academic department, the odds were stacked against what Inouye described as “a loose confederation of small programs.” In regard to the hiring process, Inouye explained that “it’s a disadvantage to have these small programs requesting positions because you have a little tiny program going up against History or English.” One benefit of the transition is that it has provided the department with more sway when hiring new faculty, Inouye told The Tufts Tribune. “When we make our decisions about hiring, we do that together as a department rather than as a program,” he said.
Instead of hiring separate faculty for each small language program, the department now looks for comparative scholars: professors who can teach across multiple languages and cultures. The ILCS department also manages the hiring process for each individual program. Reorganization into a singular department means fewer department administrators and chairs, further reducing the cost of maintenance. It is “more bang-for-their-buck” for the administration, as Inouye put it.
While the move to hire interdisciplinary scholars was partly motivated by a desire to cut costs, staffing shortages—caused mainly by retirement—and declining student interest also contributed to the picture. “We used to have five professors of German here . . . now we only have one,” said Inouye, adding that they only have one full professor each for the Chinese and Russian tracks. Retirement has depleted the department’s ranks, and shrinking institutional support serves as no buttress to these woes. “[International Relations enrollment] started to go down, and majors like biology and computer science and economics started to get bigger,” Inouye said. “And as the students shift to them, the administration has to fund positions for more students in their areas, so we get less positions in our area.”
Interim Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Tom Malone told the Tribune and The Tufts Daily during a joint interview that “sometimes a position becomes vacant, and there’ll be the decision not to fill that position.” Cost-efficiency is the name of the game, and as Malone says, “that’s sort of an ideal way of dealing with reducing costs, but it’s usually the last resort for a position to be eliminated.”
This departmental upheaval may attract students with wider interests in things like comparative literature, which is where the inclusion of a seventh track, Multicultural/Comparative, comes in. For the comparative track, students study literature, film, and culture across different regions while simultaneously having the opportunity to develop proficiency in a foreign language of their choice. As Inouye noted, the track was another notch in the department’s cost-efficiency belt. For each comparative scholar hired, not only are courses across language tracks covered, but a retinue of faculty who can teach comparative literature grows. With greater educational coverage, flexibility, and cross-listing, one hire can cover multiple needs.
With this new structure in place, the department is wary of the possible implications of its design. Inouye worries that “there’s a danger that the various six language programs will get neglected in favor of the comparative project.” To mitigate the effects, the department is “trying really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen by hiring people who will ground these programs.” Expertise in specific languages will not only draw students to their study, but will also ensure that the comparative track is optimally staffed. As Inouye told the Tribune, “You can’t do comparisons if you don’t have a solid foundation in these programs.”
Inouye’s fears may be justified. According to enrollment statistics that he provided, the ILCS comparative major currently has four students. There are no students majoring in the Hebrew, Japanese, or Russian tracks. Chinese, though, outweighs any other track by a large margin. 11 students constitute the Chinese track, as compared to one in both Arabic and German, respectively.
17 other students comprise a cohort who matriculated during or before the fall of 2023 and so have retained their pre-ILCS major title. Together, there are 34 pre- and post-ILCS students.
The problem is not unique to Tufts. Over the past decade, U.S. colleges and universities have seen declining enrollment in language programs across the board. According to a 2018 report from the Modern Language Association (MLA), more than 650 foreign-language programs shuttered between 2013 and 2016. The MLA reported a further drop of 16.6% between 2016 and 2021 in enrollment in languages other than English. While an 8% national decrease in college and university enrollment over that time frame may play some role in this, it does not tell the whole story.
Inouye has a hypothesis to explain this dropoff. “The larger picture, the economic picture, is that since the depression of 2008, students and parents have become more vocationally oriented,” he said. Language is seen as an area of study that scratches students’ itch for passion, rather than guaranteeing a career.
Ava Kee, a junior double majoring in Biopsychology and Chinese, expressed that she pursues her language major for personal fulfillment, rather than career pragmatism. “I’m doing this because I really want to have a degree in Chinese, but it is a lot [of work], especially for someone to balance on top of something they might want to use more directly for their career,” she explained. Kee’s Chinese major complements her Biopsychology degree, but as she notes, the increased workload is a factor that may deter the most vocationally-oriented students from participation.
Indeed, the MLA’s 2018 report indicated that emphasis on career-applicability was correlated with the robustness of a language program at a given school, elucidating that “Career services offices can help increase interest in language majors and connect students to local businesses.”
As Tufts restructures its language programs under the ILCS department, the university’s approach reflects a broader tension playing out across higher education: the question of how to cater to students’ interest in world languages while also responding to financial pressures and shifting student priorities. The consolidation could offer advantages, but it also presents challenges to students who want to focus on one distinct language.
With little to no enrollment in some major tracks due to rising vocational focus, the future of languages at Tufts remains uncertain. As Inouye states, “Cultural analysis is more and more needed. But because people are now more technically focused, I think they’re not getting as much of the humanities and arts.”
Whether ILCS ultimately strengthens language study will depend on sustained institutional commitment and student interest. As Inouye suggests, the demand for cultural literacy has not disappeared; if anything, it has grown more urgent in an increasingly interconnected world that demands cultural awareness. The challenge for Tufts, and for universities nationwide, is to ensure that economic efficiency does not come at the expense of the very global perspectives that higher education seeks to champion.
Artwork by Mia Snyder