English battles for academic respect

The internationalisation of European higher education has meant a dramatic increase in the number of courses being taught in English. However, this is not necessarily good news for English studies.

"The rise of lingua franca use of the language has actually had a negative impact on the study of English as an academic discipline," says Lachlan Mackenzie, treasurer of the European Society for the Study of English. "Knowledge of English has become more like a tool, a skill like word-processing or driving."

Mackenzie is currently putting together the findings of a roundtable meeting that the society held last year to look at how the Bologna higher education reforms are affecting its discipline. The low status of English emerged as a significant concern, since it appears to be one of the factors behind declining numbers of students choosing academic courses studying English language and culture, at least outside the UK. The problem is that English is not seen by potential employers as offering added value to a graduate.

"Many countries have responded as well as possible to the challenges - reforming course content, encouraging international co-operation and forging links with new fields of employment, like tourism, journalism and website localisation," says Mackenzie. "What remains to be seen is whether employers on the Continent are willing to see the graduates in English for what they can offer. So far, many students are not prepared to take this chance and are voting with their feet."

Speaking to other academics reveals different ideas about the low number of applicants for English studies. "It’s probably true that the subject is becoming less popular, but another problem is that the school-leaving population is decreasing, so the general number of applicants is lower than it used to be," observes Jaroslava Staöková, director of the institute of language competencies at Preöov University in Slovakia.

In her view, the student population’s mastery of English is important because it broadens their horizons. "For the best quality students, English is a must," she says, "and they prefer to study other subjects, maybe abroad, using their English competence rather than studying English as such." If a course provides a broad academic challenge, as in Preöov’s programme on British and American studies, finding students is not a problem. In contrast, in Slovakia it is getting harder to find students to study English with a view to becoming teachers.

Graham Caie, professor of English language at the University of Glasgow in the west of Scotland, sees a broader decline in university language-learning in mainland Europe, in which English still fares quite well compared with German and French. "There are a number of reasons for this," he says. "One is that people now realise they can get on all over the world speaking English. Another is that learning a new language from scratch is often seen as a difficult subject, and you’ve got the choice at university of doing something like sociology or classical studies instead."

In the UK, people study English for different reasons and student levels remain high. Here the challenge is to get people to take part in the internationalisation of their subject. Caie argues that even for a student of English at a British university, studying abroad is worthwhile. "English is taught exceptionally well in all European countries," he says. "And in a subject like linguistics, which is not limited to English as such, many countries are much better than Britain."

• Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.

The internationalisation of European higher education has meant a dramatic increase in the number of courses being taught in English. However, this is not necessarily good news for English studies.