Suppose the CS dept just did Exchange-server admin 101 - people would complain that it wasn't the proper role of a research university.
It seems that closing marginal depts, rather than just milking them as cash cows is a noble strategy - whatever the rest of the UVa management's actions
And does a university need to teach every subject? Should UVa have (for example) an Oceanography dept? Is there much point in having a one person dept teaching Vulcanology when students would be better going somewhere else that specializes in it?
10 years ago the Netherlands started this process for their entire country. They picked the subjects that their universities did very well at and decided to close all the other research depts. There was no point in having the 100th ranked dept of tropical medicine when students could go somewhere else to learn that and you could use the money to support the worlds top dept in some other topic
Education in foreign languages has far reaching affects on many aspects of life and cognitive abilities - this is a documented fact. The analogy to Exchange is broken in many, many ways. Training on a product only brings some level of competency in that product, as soon as it end-of-lifes, the skill is useless. Learning a language opens many doors, and I don't really see German being end-of-lifed any time soon.
Perhaps every university doesn't need a research oceanography unit, but it sure would be nice if they provided at least a teaching unit or two on those. Or do we just tell the students that would like to know something about it, "screw you, enroll at these other universities too, if you want to learn the basics of that.". I understand that in the Netherlands, this may not be that difficult, it is a small country, but in many places, e.g. the US where UVA is, the college where they kept an oceanography program is probably sever hundred, or even thousands of kilometers away.
Finally, the basics of subject do not need leading experts to teach them well. For low level classes, most people capable of getting a Ph.D and an interest in teaching can cover the material quite well. In fact, there is a whole school of thought (with pretty good evidence) that suggests that experts can't teach novices a subject very well at all. (this is known as the tacit or expert knowledge problem).
In europe where every city has a university this is easier and going to a particular university because of a particular course is more common. There are probably only 4-6 veterinary/dentistry ugrad programs in a country and perhaps half the places will have a medical school.
It's different in the US with in-state tuition, but at some point it is cheaper for the state to just say we aren't teaching Oceanography at U of Iowa - here is a scholarship to UCSD to cover the difference in tuition.
Oh wait, no. There are lots of german speakers in the US, but when German companies do business here, they send people who can speak English. Many (most?) US companies send employees to do business in other countries who speak the local language. It doesn't have to be even a fluent level of speech, but the gesture is well received on all ends. It is a general courtesy to at least attempt to have people who speak the language, as it signals other cultural awarenesses and sensitivities.