1. Dutch in the UK and Republic of Ireland: an overview

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22 out of the 42 (52%) participating institutions offer Dutch in some form compared to 20 (43%) in 1992. Nine out of the 20 institutions who are currently not providing Dutch courses, in fact used to offer some form of tuition in the Dutch language. Reasons for its demise or suspension were, for the most part: lack of staff, dwindling student numbers, lack of funding, or (in the case of the University of Bournemouth where it was taught to prepare students for a study placement abroad) the lapse of exchange agreements.

Of the remaining eleven responding universities not offering Dutch, eight have no plans to introduce it owing to very little demand, and two would like to if resources and funding were available . It is also worth noting that City University London, although not offering any Dutch classes, does offer preparation for the Institute of Linguists translation diploma, for which a number of the candidates are translating from and into Dutch.

Three out of the 22 institutions (13%) presently offering Dutch are due to suspend all their courses in the next couple of years for the same reasons as cited above. They are: University of Brighton (in 2007), University of East Anglia and University of York (both at the end of the 2005-06 academic session).

However, perhaps the most dramatic developments of the first years of the 21 st century are those at the University of Hull , which has had a thriving Dutch section since 1976. This has now almost completely disappeared and with effect from the academic year 2006-07 Dutch at Hull will only be available as part of its Institution-Wide Language Programme (IWLP; see section 2b, below). This has been balanced by more positive moves elsewhere in Yorkshire: the University of Sheffield has seen a modest but strategic expansion in terms of its Dutch Studies programmes and staff.

Two of the responding universities, University College Dublin and University College Galway, have Harting Scholars [1] but provide no Dutch courses.

According to our responses, the number of institutions offering Dutch per nation is as follows: Scotland 1, Republic of Ireland 4, Wales 1, and England 16. We had no responses from Northern Ireland .

In terms of institutional structure, there is one actual Dutch department in the UK , at UCL. Elsewhere Dutch may be integrated in another department, usually a Department of German or of Germanic Studies, or a Department of Modern Languages. Where it is part of an IWLP, it is often taught in a university's language centre.

Note

[1] A Harting Scholar (now referred to as a 'Project Student Assistant') has his/her fees waived at a foreign university of their choice in exchange for teaching and assisting in examining Dutch. The Harting scholar teaches a maximum of four hours a week and in exchange is entitled to take one or more undergraduate or postgraduate courses at the same university. See also section 6, Staff Details and http://taalunieversum.org/taalunie/toelage_voor_studentassistenten/.

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