Anytime a university cuts a program, it is bound to make headlines. When programs have truly outlived their usefulness, cutting them is certainly justified. Clearly, this is not the case with foreign languages.
Universities are the repositories of human intellectual achievements.
As President Maxwell no doubt agrees, in moments when he is not defending his own action, the study of the nature of language is one of the pinnacles of intellectual achievement. However, language learning is not a monolithic, linear process. Linguists have learned out that it takes about five years for children to discern and apply the structure of their own, first language, the structuring seeds of which we are all born with. Plunking a monolingual student directly into a foreign language environment without any study of accumulated knowledge of language structure is similar to sending someone forth to reinvent the wheel. Universities, to put it baldly, produce educated individuals, with all the trappings of that education.