Learning a foreign language may challenge many students, but Professor Vijai Dixit proves that it is more than possible.
Dixit, a professor in his 23rd year at Saint Louis University, teaches courses in three departments-modern and classical languages, physics and mathematics.
His career in education has stretched to classrooms around the globe.
Dixit has taught at Purdue University; Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium; Shiraz University in Shiraz, Iran; at universities in the West Indies; a university in Kingston, Jamaica; the University of Bielefeld in Germany; and at numerous international centers in Trieste, Italy and other locations-although he said that he does not count these last few, because they are not technically universities. Despite his globe trotting career, Dixit finds the job to be the same anywhere.
“I enjoy teaching anywhere where there are students willing to learn,” Dixit said. “If students are willing to learn, I am willing to teach what I know.”
Dixit is fluent in a plethora of languages, all of them in the Indo-European language family, although he says that he is able to read and understand more than he can speak. The India native speaks many languages of northern India, English, Dutch, French, Persian and Spanish.
“I have an aptitude and love for languages,” he said. “You are never done learning if the language is not your own. The learning is a lifelong process.”
Dixit has lived in St. Louis longer than he lived in India, which he left to attend Purdue University as a graduate student in physics in 1967.
The cosmopolitan professor said that some universities in the United States do not present the sort of intellectual challenge that many foreign institutions offer their students.
In Belgium, Iran and Jamaica, for instance, students have to compete to get in to the “Centers for Excellence.” According to Dixit, the expectations for students are harder in these places than they are here.
The dropout rate is much higher in such institutions, but they are funded by the state. The professors are told to keep their standards up, despite the number of students that may come and go.
“There is definitely a lowering of standards here,” Dixit said. “I believe it is because the education here is broad, but shallow. In the classroom, I cannot demand and get the same that I would in other places.”
Dixit said that the levels of education in the world are becoming more relative, and that there is excellent education offered at institutions around the world. He also said that the United States’ previous advantage is being eroded by the skyrocketing increase in Internet availability.
As students from around the world compete in the international job market, life is becoming increasingly more difficult for graduates from SLU and other universities in the U.S., he said.
