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cooperation and exchange has led to the argument that what emerges unambiguously is that 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 institutions of higher learning, a move that itself necessitates a change in language policy from national languages to English. Malaysia was one the earliest Asian countries to develop transnational private higher education opportunities for its citizens and to also develop the nation as a regional hub of education (Gill, 2004, p. 140). Malaysia provided higher education opportunities in English as far back as the 1980s. This was when Malaysian educational entrepreneurs responded to a sudden local need for cheaper international degrees by developing a system whereby students did two years at a Malaysian private college and then through credit transfer could enter the third year of US universities. Based on this model, they then went on to initiate twinning programs (1 + 2 and 2 + 1) with British and Australian universities in the late 1980s. As a consequence, Malaysia has come to have some 100 private colleges and private university-colleges, which have partnership programs with universities in Australia, Great Britain, the United States, and other English-speaking countries. In addition, there are now a total of more than a dozen private universities established after 19978 when the economic crisis set in. These include engineering universities set up by the three public utility corporations in Malaysia, Telekom (the national telecommunications company), Tenaga Nasional (the national electricity board), and Petronas (the national petroleum 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 money making ventureall of this contributes to the global academic capitalism. As a result, there is tremendous interest from British, American, and Australian universities to export their education to Asia. This has contributed to the growth of English-medium universities in Asia. Examples include Nottingham University which has campuses in Ningbo, China and in Malaysia. Chapman University from the United States of America has a campus in Singapore as has the University of Newcastle, UK, which has set up a medical campus in Malaysia. Leeds Metropolitan University has a campus in Bhopal, India and the University of Liverpool has a campus in China, and Monash University has a campus in South Africa and Malaysia. These Asian countries and universities are trying to establish themselves as education hubs and attract international students from the region. Not only does this bring the university income and prestige, it can also be attractive to regional students as fees and living expenses are appreciably lower than those in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United 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 teaching medium for selected professional subjects, including information technology, biotechnology, new-material technology, nance, foreign trade, economies, and law. This change was afrmed 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 at one of the premier business schools in China (the Qinghua University Economics and Management School): I hope all the classes will be taught in English. I dont worship foreign languages, but we need to exchange our ideas with the rest of the world (South China Morning Post, 2001).
Even Indonesia, the country that was a role model for Malaysia in its own language planning 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 Ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology to participate in the Global 30 Project 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 undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses in English in politics, economics, science, and engineering, beginning in September 2010. The rise in the number of Asian universities offering degree courses through English has been seen as a threat to the privileged position occupied by prestigious universities in the United States and the United Kingdom (Kirkpatrick, 2009). In a report compiled in 2009 for the British prime minister, Gordon Brown (UK/US Study Group, 2009), leaders of 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 bind universities and countries together through common values and principles. Yet this is framed 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 respective Asian and European countries are not forgotten (although other languages often are). Apart from Singapore, which made the decision to use English as their main medium of instruction in 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 between national and international needs and challenges manifest through linguistic educational policies. A clear case is demonstrated by public universities in Malaysia that use English for courses of science and technology and Bahasa Melayu for social science and humanities. Yet, how precisely to introduce this limited notion of bilingual education (the national language + 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. At one 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. Preisler suggests, however, that the notion of complementary languages needs to be introduced where the two languages will be functionally distributed within the individual programme according 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 in English. However, the situation at the other seven government universities in Hong Kong demonstrate how slow institutions have been to embrace the notion of complementarity as all, with the exception of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, are English-medium only universities. This is despite the governments policy of creating a citizenry that is trilingual 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) only through English. In other words, complementarity is not the norm for higher education in 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
demand and an increase of 27% from 2000. Within Asia, China and India will represent the key growth drivers, generating over half of the global demand in international higher education by 2025 because of their booming economies. SEE ALSO: English in Higher Education in the Postcolonial World; Language Policy and Planning; 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: Nationalism versus 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 literature and 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 EnglishSpeaking 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 universities as a case. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Rassool, N., & Mansoor, S. (2007). Global issues in language education and development. In N. 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 and marketplaces. London, England: ASEAN.