We, the undersigned, deplore the approved closure by Oxford Brookes University of its degree programmes in German and Spanish, and its entire language provision in Italian. This decision is ill-conceived and ill-timed. This is particularly true in the context of the identified national need for multi-lingual graduates to work in UK business, industry and the professions. The measures announced at Oxford Brookes are totally at odds with the contents of the recently published National Strategy for Languages in Higher Education in the UK. Furthermore, an HE Funding Council report published in June 2005 identifies languages and area studies in higher education as

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