sudanglo:

I believe in Universal Grammar

What is meant by Universal Grammar?

A concept that has been around since the 13th century, but until lately Noam Chomsky made it famous.

LMGTFY

How many monolingual English speakers are there in the US?
Is foreign language education part of the obligatory academic curriculum?
If yes, does it start in pre-school, primary, secondary or tertiary education?

What "weight" do foreign languages in education have?
Are they considered to be something essential like algebra or science?
Are they considered something exotic?
Are they considered something unnecessary?

Can you get a college degree without a single foreign language?
Can you get a doctor's degree without a single foreign language?

What is the situation in the United Kingdom compared to the United States?

I think growing up in an English speaking country, regardless of whether or not it is the US really drives down the need to speak more than one language. You can easily get by only knowing English, even if you live in a lot of other non english speaking countries.

As for your questions, though you asked about UK and US I thought you might be interested in Australia too

In Australia there is no real standard, I went to several different school and in each one we learned a different language (bahasa indonesia, french and german). If someone knows more than one language, they are almost without fail someone whose background isn't Australian (i.e. parents from overseas or they themselves are). In fact, I know no Australian person who knows another language, but hasn't got any recent foreign ancestry. There are out there of course, for example Kevin Rudd knows Mandarin, but I mean to say I know of none in person.

Further, they would be considered mostly unnecessary, you do not need to learn one at a university, and a lot of the universities here don't have really strong programs to teach you those languages. You can easily get a masters or a PhD without knowing a second language.

In Texas, US, you have to have 2 language credits to graduate from high school. Most middle schools in my city offer Spanish, and kids can take that class and enter high school with one language credit, and they have to take a second Spanish class to have both credits. I went to a private school from pre-k to 8th grade, and they taught us Spanish for 9 years, from kindergarten to 8th grade. I took Spanish 2 at my public high school last year, so I have all of my language credits, but I'm taking German this year, because I wanted to take a language class and Spanish was boring me after 10 years. My school also offers French, Russian, and Japanese in addition to Spanish and German, but most of the high schools in the city only offer Spanish and French, while one other offers German, and my school is the only school that offers Japanese and Russian.