LANGUAGE PROFESSIONALS who have experienced program closures often, and rightly so, attribute those cuts to budgetary factors. Indeed, the beginning of a wave of increasingly common program curtailments or eliminations and subsequent enrollment declines in German studies coincide with the financial crisis that began in 2007 and deepened in 2008. Additionally, the perceived unimportance of language learning has also been identified as justification for discontinuing certain degree programs, especially in the humanities. In a particularly striking example that combines reasons of budget and irrelevance, a June 2012 Washington Post article reports on the firing of a University of Virginia president who “lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn't sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.” In light of economic challenges, discussions about the vocational significance or insignificance of particular fields of study, and in setting strategic goals for the year 2020, government agencies and university strategic planners have released documents that chiefly emphasize the correlation between skills learned in academic programs and practical job training. Although the authors of such reports often mention globalization, for example in reference to “the creation of high-skill and high-wage opportunities for workers in the global economy,” they rarely prioritize language proficiency as part of the essential skill set for a new globalized workforce. On the surface, this information certainly does not deliver the good news that Germanists might need, yet the steady media attention to language learning as an academic discipline can actually invigorate discussions about German studies that complement and run parallel to dialogues about the adult education system and a new educated workforce. In recent decades, language professionals have transformed negative trends, such as a shift in academic priorities and attitudes toward foreign language study, into a positive boost for language program visibility and continued vitality. German language professionals, in particular, have seized opportunities and must continue to take advantage of them in order to cultivate the innovative thinking skills and strategic planning abilities that they have had to acquire in their roles as language educators and program advocates.

In anticipation of further changes within local programs and the larger profession, German instructors must assert their central importance in strategic plans for higher education, which, for example, call for increased collaboration and “provid[ing] greater flexibility in how, when, and where students learn.”