english in asian and european higher education

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The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, First Edition. Edited by Carol A. Chapelle. 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

English in Asian and EuropeanHigher Education

SARAN KAUR GILL AND ANDY KIRKPATRICKThe internationalization of higher education has led to a noticeable increase in the numberof courses and degrees taught through the medium of English. One of the main reasonsis the fact that higher education is a lucrative industry. As a result, there is a need tointernationalize curricula as part of the strategy to attract students from different parts of the world to universities in varying locations of the globe. Another reason is for nationswanting to be active players in the knowledge economy and thus there is the need to beable to access and contribute to latest advancements in the eld of science and technology.All of these align with the need to attract international students and staff and to publishand be cited internationally, both important criteria of the Shanghai Jiaotong and the TimesHigher ranking schemes for universities.

In a study commissioned by the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA), Wachterand Maiworm (2008) investigated the number of English-taught programs in Europeanhigher education for the year 2007. They discovered that some 2,400 degrees were nowtaught in English in continental Europe, with the major move towards English-taughtprograms being in the Netherlands and Northern Europe, although there was also evidenceof a signicant shift towards English-taught programs in Spain. They identied 774 English-medium degree programs in the Netherlands, 415 in Germany, 235 in Finland, and 123 inSweden. Phillipson (2009) questions the Swedish gure, saying the data from the SwedishNational Agency of Higher Education shows that as many as 480 out of a total of 680 MA

degrees are taught in English.Wachter and Maiworms ndings for 2007 contrasts with those of their earlier 2002 studywhich reported that English-medium tuition in continental Europe was still a relativelymarginal phenomenon with only 700 English-medium degree programs (Maiworm &Wachter, 2002). This sudden and rapid increase of English in higher education has ledColeman to argue that it seems inevitable that English, in some form, will denitely become the language of higher education (Coleman, 2006, p. 11). Nevertheless, Wachterand Maiworm hold a more sanguine view, pointing out that despite the steady growth,in no country are English taught programmes anywhere near challenging the survival of the domestic language (Wachter & Maiworm, 2008, p. 91).

This increase in English-medium programs has been mirrored by the increase inscholarly publications in English. For example, Hamel reports that even the journal of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Applique(and note the French title of the organiza-tion) has, since 2003, become an English-only publication. He states that the presentpre-eminence of English language use in scientic publications has already severely reducedmultilingualism in the eld, and may eliminate the status of any other language as aninternational language of science (Hamel, 2007, p. 66).

In the European context, this relatively sudden and rapid shift to English-mediumprograms is one consequence of the Bologna Process, named after the Bologna Declarationsigned on June 19, 1999 in Bologna. The main aim of the Bologna Process is to create aEuropean higher education area (EHEA) which will facilitate academic cooperation and

staff and student exchange within Europe. To date 46 countries have signed up (BolognaProcess, 2010). The adoption of English as the common language to facilitate academic


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cooperation and exchange has led to the argument that what emerges unambiguously isthat in the Bologna Process, internationalization means English-medium higher education(Phillipson, 2009, p. 37).

In order to attract international students, many countries in Asia have opened their

doors to a model of transnational education with collaborative links with foreign institu-tions of higher learning, a move that itself necessitates a change in language policy fromnational languages to English.

Malaysia was one the earliest Asian countries to develop transnational private highereducation opportunities for its citizens and to also develop the nation as a regional hubof education (Gill, 2004, p. 140). Malaysia provided higher education opportunities inEnglish as far back as the 1980s. This was when Malaysian educational entrepreneursresponded to a sudden local need for cheaper international degrees by developing a systemwhereby students did two years at a Malaysian private college and then through credittransfer could enter the third year of US universities. Based on this model, they then wenton to initiate twinning programs (1 + 2 and 2 + 1) with British and Australian uni-versities in the late 1980s.

As a consequence, Malaysia has come to have some 100 private colleges and privateuniversity-colleges, which have partnership programs with universities in Australia, GreatBritain, the United States, and other English-speaking countries.

In addition, there are now a total of more than a dozen private universities establishedafter 19978 when the economic crisis set in. These include engineering universities set up by the three public utility corporations in Malaysia, Telekom (the national telecommunica-tions company), Tenaga Nasional (the national electricity board), and Petronas (the nationalpetroleum company) to branch campuses of foreign universities, as mentioned below (Gill,2004, p. 141).

Presently, in the Asian region, private higher education has become a signicant moneymaking ventureall of this contributes to the global academic capitalism. As a result,there is tremendous interest from British, American, and Australian universities to exporttheir education to Asia. This has contributed to the growth of English-medium universitiesin Asia. Examples include Nottingham University which has campuses in Ningbo, Chinaand in Malaysia. Chapman University from the United States of America has a campus inSingapore as has the University of Newcastle, UK, which has set up a medical campus inMalaysia. Leeds Metropolitan University has a campus in Bhopal, India and the Universityof Liverpool has a campus in China, and Monash University has a campus in South Africaand Malaysia.

These Asian countries and universities are trying to establish themselves as educationhubs and attract international students from the region. Not only does this bring the uni-versity income and prestige, it can also be attractive to regional students as fees and livingexpenses are appreciably lower than those in countries such as the United Kingdom, theUnited States of America, and Australia, where many international students currently study.

In China, as the country prepares to participate fully in the World Trade Organization(WTO), universities and colleges have been instructed to use English as the main teachingmedium for selected professional subjects, including information technology, biotechnology,new-material technology, nance, foreign trade, economies, and law. This change wasafrmed in a circular from the Education Ministry in China, which said that 5% to 10%of universities total courses must be taught in a bilingual manner in 3 years time. These

instructions came after Premier Zhu Rongji made the following statement in June 2001 atone of the premier business schools in China (the Qinghua University Economics andManagement School): I hope all the classes will be taught in English. I dont worshipforeign languages, but we need to exchange our ideas with the rest of the world ( SouthChina Morning Post , 2001).


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Even Indonesia, the country that was a role model for Malaysia in its own languageplanning stages, is pragmatically relaxing its control over mother-tongue medium of instruction in favor of English, in order to attract international students. This is reected by an advertisement for a medical degree from Padjadjaran University as a program that

is conducted fully in the English language ( The Malay Mail, August 14, 2001).In Japan, Waseda University is one of the universities nominated by the Japanese Ministryfor Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology to participate in the Global 30Project for establishing core universities for globalization (http://www.waseda.jp/eng/news09/100215e.html). This has led the university to offer a total of nine undergraduateand postgraduate degree courses in English in politics, economics, science, and engineer-ing, beginning in September 2010.

The rise in the number of Asian universities offering degree courses through Englishhas been seen as a threat to the privileged position occupied by prestigious universitiesin the United States and the United Kingdom (Kirkpatrick, 2009). In a report compiled in2009 for the British prime minister, Gordon Brown (UK/US Study Group, 2009), leadersof several American and British universities call for the establishment of an Atlantic Trust by which American and British universities will partner universities from other parts of the world, ostensibly to foster the development of a global civil society which will binduniversities and countries together through common values and principles. Yet this isframed as part of a challenge of extending the UK/US model to third locations (2009,p. 3) and the language through which this will be achieved is English.

Despite the increase in English-medium programs, the national languages in respectiveAsian and European countries are not forgotten (although other languages often are). Apartfrom Singapore, which made the decision to use English as their main medium of instructionin the entire educational system including universities, many other nations in Asia have

adopted a bilingual system of education. This is to ensure that there is a balance betweennational and international needs and challenges manifest through linguistic educationalpolicies. A clear case is demonstrated by public universities in Malaysia that use English forcourses of science and technology and Bahasa Melayu for social science and humanities.Yet, how precisely to introduce this limited notion of bilingual education (the nationallanguage + English) remains the subject of controversy and experimentation. One principle being tried is that of parallel languages (Preisler, 2009), but this has yet to be dened. Atone extreme it means that all subjects should be taught in the national language and English.At the other extreme, universities may simply offer courses in English as they so wish. Preislersuggests, however, that the notion of complementary languages needs to be introducedwhere the two languages will be functionally distributed within the individual programmeaccording to the nature of its components, that is, the national or international scope of their academic content and orientation of their students (Preisler, 2009, p. 26).

At the Hong Kong Institute of Education students take degrees in Cantonese, Putonghua,or English, and many degrees have some modules taught in Cantonese and others inEnglish. However, the situation at the other seven government universities in Hong Kongdemonstrate how slow institutions have been to embrace the notion of complementarityas all, with the exception of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, are English-mediumonly universities. This is despite the governments policy of creating a citizenry that istrilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua, and English and biliterate in Chinese and English.Thus the overwhelming majority of higher education degrees and programs in a Chinese

city with a population of more than 7 million are taught (ofcially, in any event) onlythrough English. In other words, complementarity is not the norm for higher educationin Hong KongEnglish-medium only is.

In forecasting global demand for international higher education, Bohm, Davis, and Pearce(2002, cited in Ng, 2009) found that by 2025, Asia will represent some 70% of total global


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demand and an increase of 27% from 2000. Within Asia, China and India will representthe key growth drivers, generating over half of the global demand in international highereducation by 2025 because of their booming economies.

SEE ALSO : English in Higher Education in the Postcolonial World; Language Policy andPlanning; Multilingualism and Higher Education; Multilingualism in Economic Activity;Status Planning

References

Bologna Process. (2010). The Bologna declaration. Retrieved March 24, 2010 from www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/

Coleman, J. A. (2006). English medium teaching in European higher education. Language Teaching,39, 114.

Gill, S. K. (2004). Medium-of-instruction policy in higher education in Malaysia: Nationalismversus internationalization. In J. W. Tollefson & A. B. M. Tsui (Eds.), Medium of instruction policiesWhich agenda? Whose agenda?(pp. 13552). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hamel, R. E. (2007). The dominance of English in the international scientic periodical literatureand the future of language use in science. AILA Review, 20, 5371.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2009, September 10). Global? Not remotely. Times Higher Education Supplement.Maiworm, F., & Wachter, B. (2002). English-language-taught degree programmes in European higher

education. Bonn, Germany: Lemmens.Ng, S. W. (2009). What internationalization of higher education should aim at . Hong Kong: Centre

for Governance and Citizenship, Hong Kong Institute of Education.Phillipson, R. (2009). English in higher education: Panacea or pandemic? Angles on the English-

Speaking World, 9, 2957.Preisler, B. (2009). Complementary languages: The national language and English as working

languages in European universities. Angles on the English-Speaking World, 9, 1028.South China Morning Post . (2001, September 20). China varsities to teach in English.UK/US Study Group. (2009). Higher education and collaboration in global context: Building a global

civil society. A private report to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.Wachter, B., & Maiworm, F. (2008). English-taught programmes in European higher education . Bonn,

Germany: Lemmens.

Suggested Readings

Mortensen, J., & Haberland, H. (in press). Englishthe new Latin of the elites? Danish univer-sities as a case. International Journal of the Sociology of Language.

Rassool, N., & Mansoor, S. (2007). Global issues in language education and development. InN. Rassool (Ed.), Global issues in language, education and development(pp. 21841). Clevedon,England: Multilingual Matters.

Tan, A. M. (2002). Malaysian private higher education: Globalisation, privatization, transformation andmarketplaces. London, England: ASEAN.

english in asian and european higher education

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