Leading article: Why we need to say 'oui'

Today Peter Hain, the minister for Europe, is hosting a lunch for young people to try to get across the message that membership of the European Union is good for us. Let's hope the word goes out from beyond the Foreign Office dining room to students around the country that spending time on a Socrates-Erasmus exchange is a smart thing to do. For the fact is that the United Kingdom has a pitiful record when it comes to numbers signing up for the cross-European exchanges. French and German students hasten to the UK to study part of their degree at a British university, but increasingly few make the journey the other way. As our article on page 8 shows, numbers of UK students on these exchanges have fallen again for the academic year 2001-02.

It may be difficult to buck market forces that make English the lingua franca of the world, and certainly the business world. But universities should be equipping students with the education and experience they need for life in a world that is multicultural and multilingual. We are living in an era of increasing Europeanisation and globalisation. Yet languages seem to be regarded in Britain as a bit like tatting and embroidery in the 18th century – all right as accomplishments for those who can afford them, but not essential to the nation's future.

The French have got the message. At Sciences Po, the institute for political science in Paris, the dons have instituted a compulsory year abroad for undergraduates. Yet in Britain there is a huge cultural complacency. Very few of our universities have formulated an international policy of any kind. A period overseas needs to be built into a degree programme, as the University Council on Modern Languages proposes.

It should not be that difficult. Many universities lay on languages as optional extras, which you can take as part of your degree. We do not favour giving universities more targets for this job. But unless universities wake up to the importance of seeing themselves in a global context, we shall find we have been completely left behind in a little monocultural ghetto in the North Sea talking to one another in English and unable to understand or communicate with our neighbours across the water.