Here’s a link toward a UK report on Language learning and its importance for employability and business. There is no equivalent for the US that I know of, and yet a lot of the conclusions would be similar. Languages ARE useful, they make you more competitive on the job market. English is NOT enough.
Extract:
Any businesses have a need for the qualities that language graduates can bring to their work forces, a need which is not currently being met. Furthermore, the project has identified a belief among many employers that economic opportunities are being lost where such recruits are in short supply. Other studies have shown an unmet demand for specific language skills in the diplomatic and armed forces fields, while the growth of English as the global lingua franca has, paradoxically perhaps, created a need for interpreters and translators into English from many languages which is not currently being satisfied.
Language degrees, however, equip students with much more than technical linguistic competence, requiring individuals to demonstrate qualities of rigorous thinking,problem‑solving and resilience – among others – which are useful to employers. As technological change and travel make the world more inter ‑connected, the need for people to understand diverse cultures is growing and becoming more urgent, rather than shrinking.
Yet language study is facing a struggle to be seen as relevant by young people growing up in a world in which English is seen as globally dominant.
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