Accentuated accents

Hey professor, what's 'q' mean in this formula?"\n"Da 'q' standa barurahruru"\n"Huh?"\nEver had a prof with a really thick accent? Or maybe a somewhat flawed command of the English language?\nRight now, the Minnesota state legislature is mulling over a bill that would require public universities to take accent-clarity into consideration when hiring new professors. Authored by Rep. Bud Heidgerken (R-Freeport), the bill requests that the University of Minnesota Board of Regents establish a policy requiring new profs undergo oral interviews with their department chairs before they are allowed to teach undergraduate classes, allowing students who complain about being unable to understand a prof's accent to withdraw from the class without academic or monetary penalty and reassigning the professor to a non-teaching position -- not to be reinstituted to a classroom setting until a panel certifies them understandable -- if 10 percent of the students complain.\nSo, the editorial board held a powwow at our stronghold deep in the Carpathian Mountains -- and found we're not so keen on the idea. On the one hand, it's kind of tempting -- all things being equal, who wouldn't rather have a prof who's easy to understand? \nBut, that said, this bill doesn't seem like the right way to go about it. For one thing, it would add a new layer of bureaucracy on top of the already complex bureaucratic process of finding and hiring professors. And after all the trouble of getting that candidate, how many department chairs are actually going to bench them over their accent? Especially since many of the profs in question will be in fields where qualified candidates are hard to come by -- such as the hard sciences and mathematics. \nFor another, the ability to withdraw penalty-free due to a prof's accent sounds like a policy ripe for abuse. We can see it now: "Dude, I'm totally flunking chemistry!" "Is your prof a foreigner?" "Hey, yeah!" "Cool -- pass the bong."\nAnd then there's the possibility it might scare off clear-accented candidates. The clarity of accents, after all, can be in the eye of the beholder. Practitioners of the Queen's English will be well-rattled by a trip to the local Wal-Mart. Furthermore, unless they live in a social bubble, new profs are bound to pick up more of the local accent over time.\nHowever, just because this bill doesn't seem to, well, fit the bill, doesn't mean that universities should be complacent on this problem. Higher education is only getting more global -- and we know full well that hiring and promotion at large state universities is driven more by research credentials than by teaching skills. But won't striving for clarity help everyone involved -- students, colleagues and the profs themselves? Along with the other programs available to help faculty sharpen their teaching skills, how hard would it be to offer up the services of a speech expert or two? We only have entire programs full of 'em.