Monolingual vs. multilingual university degrees: An investigation of students’ socio economic and language profiles

The internationalisation of higher education has been gaining momentum in recent decades. Universities increasingly offer study programmes (or parts of them) in languages other than the university’s primary language of instruction. Usually, that language is English which is referred to as English Medium Instruction (EMI) (see Macaro (2018) for an overview), but there are also programmes available in other foreign languages, such as Dutch in French-speaking Belgium. These programmes are referred to as Dutch Medium Instruction (DMI). Belgium is an interesting area of research for DMI, given the importance of multilingualism, which reflects the country’s linguistic diversity and the fact that Dutch is one of its official languages. This contribution focuses on the socio-economic and language profile of students opting for a monolingual degree in French versus a multilingual degree incorporating English and/or Dutch in their curriculum. Moreover, we compare the students’ motivations for enrolling in the monolingual French degree versus a multilingual EMI and/or DMI programme. We also examine the students’ regrets and hesitations regarding their chosen language track. To this end, an online questionnaire was administered to a total of 710 undergraduate law,political sciences, and economics and management students at the French-speaking Université Saint-Louis (Brussels). The survey consisted in multiple choice questions about students’sociodemographic characteristics, language education background, and current university education. The results indicate that multilingual higher education attracts students with a higher socioeconomic status. Moreover, students exhibit personal, instrumental and integrative motivations when selecting a university degree. When comparing the motivations of DMI students in contrast to EMI students, the findings reveal that both groups primarily prioritise career prospects and linguistic factors. However, DMI students placed greater emphasis on career prospects as their primary motivational factor. Another major finding was that local students are less attracted to a degree with Dutch as a minority language in comparison to a degree with EMI. Multinomial and binary logistic regressions were carried out to identify the factors influencing the students’ choice of language stream. It was found that students with higher self-reported proficiency in English or Dutch, those who received CLIL secondary education in the target language, were engaged in extracurricular activities in the target language, or had more English or Dutch classes in secondary school, tended to opt for the multilingual university programme over the monolingual one. Furthermore, encouraging findings indicated that nearly all students who attended a Dutch-speaking secondary school are willing to pursue their university studies in multilingual programmes integrating Dutch. Taken together, these results suggest that multilingual higher education is closely linked with access inequity, and strengthen the idea that language support prior to entry and throughout EMI and DMI university programmes is needed. In addition, the findings on students’ motivational experiences offer pertinent suggestions for universities offering multilingual education and for institutions considering its introduction.

Affiliations

UCLouvainSSH/ILC/PLIN - Pôle de recherche en linguistique

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Louis, L., Degrave, P., Hiligsmann, P., & et al. (2024). Monolingual vs. multilingual university degrees: An investigation of students’ socio economic and language profiles. EuroSLA, Montpellier. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260885