The pie charts showcase the language preferences of the 1st-year university students in the U.K. in 2016, categorised by gender and department. The data covers students from the Department of Philosophy and Economics, highlighting notable differences in language choices based on academic discipline and, to a lesser extent, gender. Overall, Spanish was the foremost language choice among the Economics students, whereas the Philosophy students predominantly opted for the languages that were not preferred among their counterparts: German, Italian, and Greek.
In the Department of Economics, Spanish was the dominant choice regardless of gender, with 44% of male students and 48% of female students registering for the course. Chinese was the second most popular language among males with 24.2% of proportion, followed by Portuguese’s 14%, but significantly less popular among females (10.5%). Conversely, Chinese and Japanese had a higher proportion of female learners, at 16.2% and 6.6%, respectively, compared to 12.7% and 1.9% among males.
In the Department of Philosophy, in contrast, no students opted for Spanish. Instead, German, Italian, and Greek were the most studied languages. Among male students, Greek had the highest proportion of course takers (24.4%), closely followed by German (22.9%) and Italian (21.4%). Female students showed a stronger preference for German (32.4%), almost 10% higher than its counterpart, while Greek was precisely 10% less popular (14.4%). Although Italian was favoured by both genders, the data indicates a significant gender-based contrast, as German was remarkably more common among males whereas females preferred Greek.