Recommendations

To help meet the immediate and long-term language needs of the government agencies responsible for national security, the U.S. government must take concrete steps to determine the requirements for language in the U.S. government and the capacity for language in the U.S. and coordinate the federal and academic response to this assessment.

More specifically, a significant improvement in national capacity will require a major federal effort to increase the number and proficiency level of graduates of existing federal language education facilities as well as graduates of the nation's schools, colleges, and universities teaching languages critical to national security.

Such an effort will require increases in funding of the federal language education facilities responsible for providing language instruction to federal employees concerned with national security (including the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, the Foreign Service Institute, and agency language schools in the intelligence community).

In addition, funding for the following federally legislated education programs will have to be increased significantly:

• The dual language immersion programs in the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs of the U.S. Department of Education
• The U.S. Department of Education programs funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act and the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (Commonly referred to as "Fulbright-Hays"), to build professional infrastructure in critical languages
• The National Flagship Language Initiative of the National Security Education Program, to build a national system of language programs capable of graduating professionals with high level language expertise needed by the federal government