Experts say Australian universities have made a shortsighted decision by cutting Asiain language courses. 

La Trobe University says it will stop accepting new enrolments in Indonesian at the end of 2021, Swinburne University in Victoria has cut its courses in Chinese and Japanese, while Western Sydney University has cut its course in Indonesian as well.

La Trobe said its decision was driven by “market demand” and “low” student enrolments. 

Murdoch University announced plans to stop offering Indonesian last year, which it had taught for over 40 years, but has since postponed this decision.

Academics warn that the cuts will disadvantage Australian students and businesses in the future.

A Swinburne University spokesperson has told reporters the uni cut its language units to “focus on our strengths in STEM and technology as we emerge from the challenges presented by COVID-19”. 

Asian Studies Association of Australia president Kate McGregor says that cutting Chinese and Japanese from technology-focused universities would be particularly damaging because they are “the languages of two of the world’s leading scientific and technological innovators”. 

Indonesia is on track to become the fifth-largest economy in the world, but with fewer Australians learning the language now than there were 50 years ago, Australian businesses and students “are in danger of de-skilling ourselves”, according to Melbourne University Indonesian law expert Professor Tim Lindsey.

“It is not just slowly declining, it is a spectacular collapse from where it was 50 years ago,” he said. 

“In the 1970s there were more Australian kids, in absolute numbers studying Indonesian in year 12 than there are now. And that is when the population was a third smaller, or more.

“This is a really big problem, because this is the Asia century, as we are repeatedly told. This is a major strategic blunder …If you wish to engage closely with Indonesia and for example conduct business there – there is a need to have language skills.

“Indonesia has 271 million people, is the world’s third-largest democracy after America and India. And it has got an economy that, pre-COVID, was consistently growing around 5 per cent, and is slated to be in the top five economies in the world by 2050.

“If we are a country that is deskilled linguistically, our interactions with Asia are always going to be mediated through interpreters, often provided by the host country or other countries. That is not in our national interests.”

He said that the government should subsidise Asian language programs at schools and universities.

“The evidence is very clear that where governments subsidise and support the teaching of Asian languages, student numbers will increase. And equally without those subsidies they will decline,” Dr Lindsey said.

“The Keating government introduced a program for subsidising Asian languages that was axed under the Howard government. The Rudd government introduced a much smaller program, that was axed under the Gillard government... The Keating program resulted in a significant number of enrolments.”