The Englishization of Higher Education in Europe

Abstract

The tension between monolingualism and multilingualism has left its mark on the cultural history of Europe. Current public and academic debates about the Englishization of higher education pitch proponents of the monolingual ideal of a common language that promotes communication against advocates of the maintenance of linguistic diversity that does more justice to the multicultural reality and enriches life. Notwithstanding the differences between European countries, the switch from an initially monolingual curriculum to a bilingual and sometimes multilingual curriculum in higher education has led to debates about the consequences of the Englishization for the quality of higher education, cultural identity, inequality between stakeholders and the opportunities to express concern about this process.

Perspectives of business stakeholders about EMI in Turkiye

“…The Englishisation of higher education is also a closely related phenomenon even though it might have hindered the pluralisation attempts in European higher education (Le Lièvre, 2021). Wilkinson and Gabriëls (2021) define Englishisation as "the process in which the English language is increasingly gaining ground in domains where another language was previously used" (p. 14). Englishisation of higher education is a very common practice globally.…”

“…Englishisation of higher education is a very common practice globally. Recent research and reviews that examined the issues of internationalisation and Englishisation of higher education explored these concepts in the contexts of East Asia , North Africa and the Middle East (Curle et al, 2022) and Europe (Wilkinson & Gabriëls, 2021). In the European context, country-specific investigations included Spain (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2016), Italy (Murphy & Zuaro, 2021), Estonia and Latvia (Soler & Rozenvalde, 2021) and Turkiye (Mert et al, 2023;Sahan, 2021;Toprak, 2019).…”

“…These goals are enhancing linguistic diversity and mobility in higher education institutions (Doiz et al, 2012) and producing a highly skilled linguistically competent workforce (Coyle, 2008). One of these goals, enhancing linguistic diversity, however, might have been hampered by the dominance of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes in the European higher education setting, as many European countries have opted to change from a primarily monolingual curriculum in the first language (L1) to an EMI-or a bilingual curriculum (Wilkinson & Gabriëls, 2021). That is to say, in many settings, universities have not advanced the Council of Europe's goal of plurilingualism (Sheils, 2010; they have merely opted for providing EMI programmes alongside those in the L1.…”