STEM students protest school’s decision to require Chinese study for graduation

The student council of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (“MFTI”) has launched a petition protesting the new requirement that all students must study Chinese to graduate.

The student organization explains that its talks with the school’s Foreign Languages department came to naught, and that the introduction of Chinese as a required second foreign language is “absurd and harmful” to academics at MFTI.

The Russian news outlet Vedomosti reported on the curriculum change at MFTI on Tuesday, quoting the school administration’s statement that 27 percent of all scientific articles in MFTI’s specialty disciplines are now written in Chinese. “Experts forecast,” the statement also said, “that by 2030 up to half of all technical and engineering documentation will be published in the language of our eastern neighbor.”

According to earlier reports on Telegram, MFTI is phasing out its Spanish, German, and French course offerings.