This month’s Spotlight* was contributed by linguist/lawyer Rosemary Salomone, the Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law (Queens, New York, USA). Her latest book is The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language (Oxford University Press).
For more on this topic, view a recording of the Hub’s recent webinar, “The Impact of Global English on Higher Education and Beyond: A Conversation with Scholars of the Open Society University Network”.
As a common language, English facilitates international travel, communication, innovation, diplomacy and economic and social mobility. At the same time, however, English is dividing the world into “haves” and “have nots,” heightening economic and social inequities at a time when nationalism and populism are on the rise.
Nowhere are the consequences more far-reaching than in education, long considered the ultimate social leveler. And perhaps nowhere are they less effectively examined.
Two reports of recent years are particularly instructive. The first, The Changing Landscape of English-Taught Programmes, prepared by Studyportals for the British Council, found that beyond the “Big Four” Anglophone destinations of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, there had been a 77 percent increase in English-taught programs since January 2017. Europe continued in the lead while China and Sub-Saharan Africa showed the clearest signs of growth. Programs were primarily found in ranked and especially top-ranked universities though they were gradually trending downward to smaller less prestigious institutions.
The second report, English First’s English Proficiency Index, the annual ranking of two million adults in 112 countries where English is not the national language, found that English proficiency was high and rising in Europe, and mostly improving in Latin America. Trends, though, were poor in Asia and Africa and slow in the Middle East.
Since 2015, adults in their 30s overall had improved their English three times as much as those in their early twenties. The report suggested that this indicated the motivation among young adults to learn English for the career benefits. If so, it implicitly suggested that school systems were failing to adequately equip students with English language skills before they entered the workforce. The report also found a significant urban/rural divide with adult English proficiency higher in nearly every large city as compared with the surrounding region.
Europe provides fertile ground for exploring the English divide and its consequences. Universities use English to drive internationalization and burnish their reputation, as well as to prepare students for the global economy, and, in some cases, to raise revenue. Although most Europeans begin learning English at an early age, the vocabulary and fluency needed to function at an academic level far exceed the basic conversational skills acquired in school language classes – at times from teachers who are not fluent in English.
Hence, English-taught programs tend to favor more privileged students who have benefited from high quality English instruction in well-resourced private or public schools, as well as from private tutoring and family trips abroad. Others have difficulty mining the depths of their English reading assignments at university, while their writing similarly lacks substance and nuance.
This academic shift has fallen equally hard on professors. Faculty hiring and promotions are increasingly based on citations in indexed English language journals. But for those who lack the skills to teach and write effectively in English, producing a publishable English manuscript is time consuming, at times demanding lengthy negotiations with editors and reviewers. Some turn to “literacy brokers” who charge hefty fees unaffordable to younger and less economically secure scholars. And where higher education is state funded, as is common in Europe, publishing solely in English denies taxpayers from less privileged classes important information affecting their daily lives.
Heated debates in France, Italy, and the Netherlands have raised many of these concerns with mixed results. In 2013, French intellectuals and others sparred over the Fioraso law, which loosened restrictions on teaching in languages other than French; by 2021, France had jumped to fourth place in Europe (excluding the UK) in its number of English language programs.
In 2017, the Italian Constitutional Court struck down a plan to switch all graduate programs to English at the prestigious Politecnico di Milano. Despite that, the Italian government announced that proposals for research funds, even in the humanities, must be written in English, with oral interviews also conducted in English. Aside from its questionable legality, this mandate is especially confounding given that English proficiency among Italian adults was the lowest in western Europe.
Even English-proficient northern European countries, which spearheaded English-taught programs, now question whether they have overreached. The Netherlands is considering placing a cap on English-taught programs, thereby reducing the intake of international students. The plan would also place greater weight on Dutch in bachelor’s degree programs and in teaching Dutch to international students. Denmark instituted a similar plan in 2018 but has since back-peddled in response to demands from industry for trained workers.
These moves from Europe are informative as English-taught programs gain momentum in countries like China, with only “moderate” English proficiency, and in unranked institutions across the globe. They suggest that before moving forward, policymakers and university leaders first consider how to mitigate the inequities. In the short term, that could involve intensive and ongoing training for schoolteachers, and English support for university students and professors. In the longer term, it could require national plans, with English instruction beginning in all primary schools regardless of their locations or intakes.
At the same time, universities must strike a reasonable balance between English-taught programs and those taught in the national language, to prepare students for both the global and domestic economies. They must also reward scholarly production in native languages to broaden the knowledge base beyond a narrow anglophone perspective.
This calls for acknowledging the role that languages play in shaping identity, promoting opportunity and disseminating knowledge in a world that is struggling to reckon with the injustices of the past while striving toward a more equitable and inclusive present.
*This essay is updated from a commentary initially published in Times Higher Education on February 1, 2022.