A backlash against English is under way in some European universities. Are Irish students still welcome?

It has been a lifeline for many Irish students. A combination of sky-high CAO points and soaring accommodation costs mean growing numbers of school leavers have been heading to Europe for university. The fact that many courses are easier to get into and are offered through the medium of English are just some of the many pull factors.

But, with many other European cities also enduring accommodation problems, and some locals growing resentful of their native language playing second fiddle to English, there are signs of a growing backlash. So, are Irish students still welcome in European universities?

In 2022, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, where courses are delivered in English, emailed its students.

“We would like to remind all students and staff that some of the habits we have acquired to cope with being Dutch in an English-speaking university in the Netherlands, although innocently motivated, have an exclusionary effect that, though inadvertent, is insidious and destructive,” the email said.

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“Students and staff burdened with these habits feel excluded, wrong-footed and placed at a disadvantage and that is just about the worst thing for a healthy institution. We are striving to be an inclusive faculty and this means that we have to do our best to not burden our international students and staff with an unnecessary and quite inappropriate guilt when their presence forces the conversation to change from Dutch into English, especially when that conversation ... should be in English in the first place.”

It continued: “Make sure you are not yourself guilty of the language-games outlined above. And take the initiative to mingle outside of your own language group of linguistic comfort zone. We see archipelagos forming of all sorts of linguistic subcultures. This is not a good development, let’s not just believe that it is good to work together, let’s actually do it.”

The email was cited in an online conference presentation about monolingual and bilingual campuses by Jos Swanenberg, a professor at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Science – and it may be just the sort of policy that is irking more locals and politicians.

In the Netherlands, where international students comprise 15 per cent of overall numbers, the outgoing government proposed that two-thirds of all standard undergraduate degrees must be in Dutch, and that international students be required to learn basic Dutch.

In 2021, the Danish government limited the number of places on courses taught through English, while the University of Copenhagen has brought in a language policy that requires tenured teaching faculty to contribute to teaching through Danish within six years.

In Norway, the University of Oslo now requires Norwegian to be the main language of instruction.

What all these northern European countries have in common is that many, if not most, of their citizens are fluent in English.

Dr Michele Gazzola lectures at the school of applied social and policy sciences at the University of Ulster, where he is an expert on multilingualism in social and economic contexts.

“It has gone too far,” he says. “The trend towards English causes concerns where it leads to the marginalisation of the local language, and many perceive it as being detrimental to cultural and scientific communication, because they are training a highly skilled workforce which is incapable of working in the language spoken by the local population. Doctors and engineers may lack the technical vocabulary. And locals whose taxes pay the low or non-existent fees are wondering: what do we get in return?”

Rankings

Gazzola says much of this is driven by rankings, which reward institutions with more international students, but that there is evidence that a focus on the English language over the subject matter can decrease teaching quality.

“Do we really want faculty who can’t communicate their research in the local language? People should develop language skills relevant to their hiring university.”

As for students, Gazzola says that they should make an effort.

“We should not overestimate the difficulty for smart young people to learn a language. We make a fuss of international students and professors, but we expect migrants coming to work here to learn English. This is unequal and unfair.”

Guy Flouch is director of Eunicas, an Irish-based organisation with experience in helping Irish students make the move to European universities. He takes a different view.

“This has periodically arisen as an issue, but reports show the economic benefits of international students. These English-language programmes were initially to help local students improve employability,” he says.

“But more EU students coming in has put pressure on university administration, accommodation and space in lecture halls. All of this is happening in the context of more native young people in northern Europe defaulting to English, leading to some concerns about the potential dilution of national identities.”

Gent Ukehajdaraj, chief executive of Erudera, another organisation that supports students abroad, agrees that the growth of international students has led to pressures on housing and teaching, but adds that countries are also taking these steps in order to increase the chances of the country’s workforces remaining after graduation.

Flouch and Ukehajdaraj both say the proposal to limit the teaching of English at third level is unlikely to be realised, not least because the third-level sector, which is relatively powerful and independent, will oppose it.

Flouch adds that English is the dominant language of academia and graduates who hope to work overseas, particularly in multinational firms, will still need English.

“I don’t think other European languages are threatened, though,” he says. “Dutch people, for instance, want to speak Dutch and are proud of speaking their language. It can be hard to learn Dutch, as they will often hear your accent and speak to you in English, a language they may be fluent in. That said, many students do make an effort to learn the local language, and that is right.”

‘People probably did get sick of hearing English everywhere’: Irish students’ experiences studying abroad

Concern over the marginalisation of native languages is not a new issue, says Roz, an Irish student who attended university in the Netherlands in 2004.

“I didn’t have to learn Dutch, but there were free or reduced prices for Dutch classes available to international students,” she says.

“I was in the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, so using English was central to their brand and functioning. I learned enough to be polite and carry out everyday tasks and to perform in my part-time job.

“But English was so prevalent that knowing the basic numbers, foods, greetings and apologies, sufficed. Negative or hostile encounters were very rare, and usually from drunk or tipsy Dutch people, or non-regular customers who didn’t seem pleased that I couldn’t converse properly ... People probably did get sick of hearing English everywhere.”

For Michael Archer, a Trinity law and politics student who spent a recent undergraduate semester in Helsinki, there were no such issues.

“I had heard a stereotype that Finns don’t do small talk – a potential issue for Irish people who will talk about anything – but everyone was friendly from the get-go,” he says.

“My modules were law-related and in English. I hung out with a diverse group of international students from across Europe, including from France, Germany and the Netherlands. We did make an effort to learn some basic Finnish, but it is a Uralic and very unfamiliar-sounding language, so it was hard to pick up. I didn’t find that negatively impacted me or my classmates and, when I visited Stockholm, everyone could speak perfect English.”

Flouch adds that English is the dominant language of academia and graduates who hope to work overseas, particularly in multinational firms, will need English.

“I don’t think other European languages are threatened, though,” he says. “Dutch people, for instance, want to speak Dutch and are proud of speaking their language. It can be hard to learn Dutch, as they will often hear your accent and speak to you in English, a language they may be fluent in. That said, many students do make an effort to learn the local language, and that is right.”