French, German education majors in crisis due to low demand

Kyungpook National University Teacher's College will no longer be offering a French education program starting in 2025, the school said Sunday.

Kyungpook National University's campus [KYUNGPOOK NATIONAL UNIVERSITY]

Kyungpook National University's Teacher's College will no longer be offering a French education program starting in 2025, the school said Sunday.

The college's French education program opened in 1970 and is one of the four remaining programs of such kind nationwide.

After the closing, Seoul National University, Korea National University of Education and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies will be the only universities in Korea to offer French education majors for prospective teachers.

As the number of students and interest in European languages decline, German and French education majors are in a crisis.

"We hired a foreign languages teacher, but there are no students to teach, so we train in other subjects as well," a Korean Education Statistics Service official said.

Pusan National University has also merged its French and German education departments with those of other foreign languages.

One reason for these closures is the number of jobs available at schools decreasing due to the lack of students.

According to the Statistical Yearbook of Education, in 1990, there were 1,119 German teachers and 698 French teachers. The number dropped to 21 German and 45 French teachers in 2022.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education hired one French and one German teacher for the first time in 22 years last year. In other regions, no French or German teachers have been hired at public schools since 2009.

In the course of eliminating French and German education departments, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies faced opposition from students, teachers and alums. But the university was forced to reduce the teacher training program quota by 30 percent after receiving a grade C in competency and capacity from the Education Ministry.

Teachers who previously taught these languages have been turning to other — more popular — subjects like English. Whereas French and German were popular foreign languages in the 90s, Chinese and Japanese are on the rise now. With East Asian countries' rising status and China's diplomatic relations with Korea, more students have taken an interest in studying Japanese and Chinese.

"Becoming a French teacher is close to impossible," Hong Seong-gu, dean of Kyungpook National University's College of Education, said. "Most students double major in Korean or English and study other majors [rather than French]."

The decline of interest in European languages is also affecting college admissions.

Certain subjects of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), Korea's college entrance exam, have been made optional in 2022. This led to only 7.4 percent of all test takers choosing foreign language subjects that year.

This is a big change from 30.8 percent of test takers choosing German and 23.6 percent choosing French in 2001 when the foreign language section was first introduced in the CSAT.

"Especially since the foreign language CSAT switched to an absolute evaluation, it doesn't affect college admissions as much," Lim Seong-ho, CEO of Jongno Academy, said. "Except for the humanities department at Seoul National University, there aren't many universities that count foreign languages, which is why it is being ignored in the CSAT."

Universities that have closed foreign language education programs say that it was an inevitable response to changes in demand.

Kyungpook National University announced its plans to establish an information and communications department after closing the French education department using the quota currently allocated to the language department.

"We determined that the demand for departments on information and communications continues to grow," Hong said. "In this era, students from all departments should have the opportunity to learn about artificial intelligence and edutech."

However, some say foreign language education should not be determined solely by demand.

"In a situation where the world is becoming polycentric and diversified, focusing on one specific language is not desirable from a national competitiveness perspective," Park Dong-yeol, a professor of French education at Seoul National University, said. "European countries educate students to be able to speak three languages."

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that the program at Kyungpook National University being closed is its French language education major within the school's Teacher's College, not the Department of French Language and Literature at the university's College of Humanities.

BY CHANG YOON-SEO,ISABELLA KIM [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]