Potential Elitism in Selection to Bilingual Studies: A Case Study in Higher Education

Abstract

This research provides information toward answering the question of whether bilingual studies at the university level might be elitist. This is a recurring research topic in terms of using English for nonlanguage instruction at the primary and secondary levels, but very few studies refer to university education. We seek to fill that gap in the literature by way of a case study centered on the International Studies degree offered by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. A survey was conducted of students in this program inquiring as to the educational and language levels of their parents as well as their possibilities for exposure to English during secondary (high school) education. The analysis of this quantitative data, student’s grades, and qualitative responses gathered through interviews with program professors does not allow us to affirm the presence of class bias in said institution during student selection for the bilingual track; nor are students in the bilingual group found to have obtained better academic outcomes than their peers in the monolingual group.