They're not letting you choose the foreign language you study?

The second foreign language, yes. We're required to study two (and can take up more if desire - for additional cost, of course) while in for a linguistics degree in Russia, and I chose English as my main foreign language - along with around fifty other people. It's an odd situation, considering the dean herself told us in her welcoming speech that we'd be allowed to do so, and yet the dean's office and dean's representatives insist on dividing languages between groups because money (or, to be more precise, given our calculations, it would take additional resources to hire new teachers).

We need new teachers because, apparently, Spanish is a very popular option - among French (the language of love and the beautiful France) and German (the language of the most industrious people in Europe). From the three groups studying English, around 30 would prefer to study Spanish, around 15 would prefer to study German, which leaves mere 5 to French. I don't understand it, either, but that our faculty does not allow us to choose seems outlandish... or it would, had it not been Russia. Check this out: this country has a democracy rating of 3.31 out of 10, sitting closer to Cuba and Afghanistan than to the US. What kind of choice were I to expect in such an atmosphere?