Leading UK universities are looking at merging their language courses to prevent department closures due to a sharp fall in the number of young people studying the subjects. The N8 consortium of research-led universities in the north of England, which includes Durham, Lancaster, Manchester and Newcastle, has held discussions over closer collaboration to share resources and best practice amid funding concerns caused by a decline in language students. Professor Nigel Harkness, deputy vice-chancellor at Newcastle University, told the Financial Times that the eight institutions had begun “initial scoping” of their modern languages offerings, highlighting the absence of a national body overseeing subject provision across UK universities. “Is this a role we might want to collectively take on in our region?” asked Harkness, professor of French at the university. “What does practical collaboration look like?” One higher education official said it was telling that even members of the Russell Group of top-ranked universities were “thinking they might need to share courses in languages to keep them going”. Another said that pressure on language departments was such that “even in Russell Group [institutions], courses are being pruned. We’re trying to find ways to survive and the government is pretty keen for universities to find their own solutions”. Harkness said of the N8 collaboration: “At one end of the scale, you can share best practice in teaching — for example, exploring how AI could be used in language learning. At the other end . . . shared degree provision, which is incredibly complex and not something we’re directly exploring.” The changes, in part the result of a lack of language teachers, could result in universities sharing teaching staff across institutions and even the closure of some departments if merged. UK applications for undergraduate language degrees have fallen significantly, down more than a fifth from 2019 to 2025, according to data from the university admissions service. This is in contrast to the overall number of applications, which is up 10 per cent over the same period. Several universities have scaled back their language offerings in recent years as a result of financial pressures, including Aberdeen, Coventry and Lincoln.
Cardiff University reversed plans to axe modern language degrees following a backlash, but still plans to cut the number of staff and students as part of its wider restructuring. Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, said it was “sensible for universities to have more regional conversations about how they provide languages to students”. But he believed the bigger and “longer-term question is, what languages do we think we need strategic provision in nationally, and how should that be safeguarded? “It would, for example, be geopolitically unwise to find ourselves without capable Russian or Chinese speakers. While it’s easy to turn off the tap, it’s much harder to turn it back on.” The FT has previously reported on the continuing decline in young people in England studying languages, with provisional data showing a sharp fall in A-level candidates this year for German and French.
This suggests overall entries for summer exams in foreign languages have fallen 1.5 per cent over the past year. Fewer than 3 per cent of A-level entries for summer exams in 2025 in England are in foreign languages, data from exam regulator Ofqual shows. This has a knock-on effect on universities, with undergraduate enrolments in language and area studies down 20 per cent over five years, according to a report published last week by the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think-tank. The report found the number of A-levels taken across the UK in physical education last year was higher than for French, German and classical languages combined.
It blamed a shortage of qualified language teachers and the decision made by Tony Blair’s government in 2004 to scrap the requirement for young people to study one language until the age of 16. The University of Manchester confirmed that, as an N8 member, it was “working collectively to address the challenges facing language provision across higher education”. Professor Caron Gentry, head of Lancaster University’s new School of Global Affairs, said languages were “fundamental to a comprehensive university education”, while adding that the institution was “looking for innovative ways to teach” the subject. Durham University said: “While we are often in dialogue with partner universities to enhance collaboration to support modern languages, we currently have no plans to change what we deliver.”
