Careers/Internships

Careers

Fluency in a foreign language is an in-demand job skill. In 2019, a survey conducted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) found that 9 out of 10 U.S. employers rely on employees with language skills other than English.

One out of three employers reports that they do not have enough people with this skill and one out of four reports that they lost business due to a lack of foreign language skills.

With as many as 56% of employers expecting an increased demand for employees who know foreign languages, adding a language major or minor will set you apart and make you more marketable.

You can learn any or all of the five languages most in demand at SCSU: Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese and German. 

Source: Making Languages Our Business (https://www.leadwithlanguages.org/wp-content/uploads/MakingLanguagesOurBusiness_FullReport.pdf)

Do you know that

• CareerBuilder.com lists over 30,000 jobs for bilingual applicants.
• bilingual employees on average earn between 5 to 20% more per hour, according to Salary.com.
• there is demand for teachers of foreign languages. According to the report America's Languages: Investing in Language Education (2017), "one of the biggest obstacles to improved language learning is a national shortage of qualified teachers. Forty-four states and Washington, D.C., report that they cannot find enough qualified teachers to meet current needs" (p. ix).
• that the U.S. Department of Labor ranked "interpreters and translators as the number one emerging occupation for graduates, with a projected growth of 31% between 2016 and 2026" (Making Languages Our Business, p. 11).

Graduates in our majors and minors work in

• Business
• Education
• Health Care
• Interpreting
• Law Enforcement
• Sciences
• Social Work
• The Peace Corps
• Translating
• Travel and Tourism