Why do major international universities still have courses in languages other than English?

Question

As an example ETH Zurich, which is arguably one of the best universities in Europe, still educates Bachelor's students in German:

Please note: the Bachelor’s degree programmes begin in German. In the second and third years of the programmes, some of the courses may take place in English.

This doesn't make sense to me as it's obvious that the vast majority of technical literature and textbooks are published in English. And pretty much every major scientific journal only accepts works in the English language. This also decreases the amount of competition between the applicants as German speakers hold an advantage over others (not to say native English speakers don't hold the same advantage back at home, but English is by far more common).

So why didn't every single major university switch to English already?

EDIT: I am mainly referring to programs in the STEM field, such as engineering

Answer 1

There are some excellent answers out there, but let's add this:

Not all undergraduate programs lead to graduate studies. In fact, most undergraduates go on to work. We can speculate that the work environment will be in the language of the country. Actually, there's even a place where this is the law. In Québec (Canada), most companies are required to have French as the working language.

Also, how are we to keep the connection between public and science if scientists cannot explain their work in the language of the public?

Answer 2

ETH and all other universities in Switzerland are funded by the government and offer college education for minimal tuition. While foreign students are welcome to attend, the primary purpose (at least at the undergraduate level) is to provide education to the locals. Nonetheless, that doesn't seem to be a limiting factor, especially at the graduate/research level since ETH has been recently ranked one of the most international institutions by Times Higher Education.

There is a wealth of excellent textbooks in German, and many fields still have original research published in German. Also, the majority of students don't pursue academic or research careers and thus might very well spend their entire career speaking almost only German.

Plus there are practical considerations too: asking non-natively English speakers to teach in English is most certainly going to decrease the average teaching quality. Now if it's to give lectures to a class that is almost entirely German speaking, it borderlines the absurd.

The question seems to be more: why would some universities switch their teaching language to English?

Answer 3

1. While original research is dominated by English, good textbooks are available in most languages. Needless to say, having learning material in your native language helps a lot, even if you master English.

2. The level of English required to read technical literature is much lower than the level required to express yourself freely and understand fast-paced speech. Having all courses in English would eliminate students which are good at their discipline but mediocre in foreign languages.

Answer 4

This is quite a discussion currently in the Netherlands, where many -if not most- of the bachelor and master studies switched to English. However, a disadvantage of following education in your non-native language, is that it's harder to understand all subtleties. Another aspect is that in many fields (medicine, psychology) communication skills are also important, and it's weird to practise those skills in another language (one you're probably hardly going to use in the job).

Answer 5

Here are some arguments based on my experience why teaching in English-only could be detrimental for students, especially at bachelor level.

Quite often, it's not only the language that's used, but also the culture from which the language is coming and the point of view of such culture. This sometimes leads to the not-invented-here mentality. For example, many English-language books talk about Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, completely ignoring people who actually published first. Such actions could lead students to develop a skewed world-view which could have detrimental results in the long run. This might also be very touchy issue if the local society has had significant number of researchers who are unknown in English-speaking circles.

Furthermore, English language is not suitable to discuss some topics. A good example would be word "ground" and electrical engineering. There are countless threads on EE.SE due to the confusion this word causes. After a while, engineer will learn to pick up enough context to figure out which ground is being discussed, but this can still be a bit problematic. In my language, on the other hand, there is no such confusion, because we have a separate word for each "aspect" of English ground, completely avoiding the "ground" confusion and the huge amount of energy needed to solve it.
Another example would be AC and DC. In my language, we have a word for unidirectional current, another for current whose direction changes. Then, we have another set of terms for constant current, for current which has one dominant frequency and another set of terms for more complicated waveforms.

Yet another reason could be backwards compatibility, especially for languages which have highly developed technical vocabulary. It's quite likely that a new engineer would need to interact with a bit older co-workers and not knowing their technical cant can make things needlessly complicated, especially when there are no direct translations between English concepts and local concepts. In cases where old technical documentation written by dead authors needs to be read, issues are even greater.

Answer 6

There are pros and cons for using a native language. The reason why not English is that there is more cons than pros.

They simply do not care enough (cons>pros) about you and your problems with their native language, to change the way the things are. If the university is not commercially making profit off foreigners, it could be that they do not even want you there. You can find many good pros in the answers, but here is probably the greatest pro:

• People think the best in their native language

Bachelors are still learning to think, so it makes it natural to teach them by the language of their thinking. They often study old stuff that has been translated a long ago to their native language. In industry they might still use that same language, because their internal things will never be communicated with foreigners. Writing stuff in English is considered extra effort, and without a reason it will not be done.

Fun BTW: In a non-German nation we use German teaching material because it is sometimes superior.

Answer 7

Two important factors are

Convenience. The materials used for teaching are usually not scientific literature, but custom course material prepared by the lecturers. Usually, the academics at the respective university have a lot of such material available in their home language. Translating everything to English is a resource-intensive task without an immediate reward. Tasks of this kind usually have a low rank on the priority list, since academics are very busy people.

Lack of incentives for change. The fact that ETH is one of the best universities in Europe, without giving their courses in English, means that they obviously can get away with it.

Answer 8

On the long term, using only English at universities will make it a lot more difficult to be able to communicate about the subject in the native language to lay people or to high school students. The native language will not have developed its own words to denote key concepts as the subject matter evolves over the years. So, a few decades down the line, you would have to explain things in English or using awkward half English sentences, making a technical subject even harder to understand.

Journalist won't bother to write about new developments for native language news reports, and it won't be on the high school curriculum. Beginning students will have less knowledge about the subject matter compared to students in English speaking nations. This effect already exists to some degree, we should not make it worse than it already is.

Answer 9

A lot of great answers, wanted to add culture as a reason by an example of a very extreme example of native speakers / English speakers.

Icelandic is spoken by around 350.000 people and also has perhaps the greatest English proficiency as non-native speakers in the world (Denmark is best according to English Proficiency Index but to me Icelanders would be higher if they were a part of the index).

Icelandic universities teach Computer Science in Icelandic. Very common English computer terminology has Icelandic equivalents fx. to save = að vista created by a committee but regular usage often involves slang fx. to save = að seiva. A few Icelandic words have been welcomed by the public.

Even though common usage goes to phrases the industry likes to provide Icelandic oriented software. Coding is primarily done in English but User Interfaces are often provided in Icelandic. One can often see a discussion in Icelandic Programmers Facebook Groups about what people consider a good translation. These are some of the most active conversations.

Answer 10

I studied engineering in France (I'm French by the way) and the vast majority of the students in my university found jobs in France... Where people mostly speak French.

So mastering your subject in your native language is not only more practical, as already said in other answers, it's also often necessary.

Of course, mastering English is required when you do science or engineering, but it doesn't have to be the only language you know.

It's not a question of lack of openness or fear of change, I consider it's enriching being able to speak and think in several languages.

Most native English speakers only know English and I believe it's a limitation, not an asset.

Dutch speak at least two languages, Swiss could speak even more (French, German and Italian are the three spoken languages in Switzerland).

Science is also about meeting and exchanging with people from many places, speaking more languages helps interactions with the rest of the scientific community.

In my workplace, most people speak French and English. Those who speak more languages have less difficulties to adapt to new contexts.

If all renown universities would only teach in English, I think it would also create a uniform way of thinking, and science is also about thinking differently than others.

Answer 11

Building on some previous answers, e.g. AndrejaKo:

When you learn something in your dominant language, it is more likely you will own it, i.e. make it your own.

Answer 12

I am currently doing my Masters at ETH, and my answer will cover why the ETH Bachelors is in German and will hopefully apply to other universities as well.

ETH is not very selective in selecting swiss students for its Bachelors degrees. In fact, since it is a federally funded Institution, it is obliged to admit any Swiss student who has passed (cf. Admission and Education section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich). They have an extremely hard exam at the end of the first year which students have to pass to continue with their studies. Usually, 50% of the students taking this exam fail and eventually drop out of ETH.

So, you are looking at a majority swiss (mostly from the german part of Switzerland) classroom. It only makes sense to have the medium of instruction as the one which most of the class is familiar with. In fact, EPFL, in the French part of Switzerland has most of its Bachelors courses in French (http://langues.epfl.ch/languages-requirements).

Since the Bachelors programmes at these universities are aimed at improving the education standards of the populace and to have a skilled work-force, they are in the local languages.

When it comes to Masters courses, which are geared towards research and have an international classroom, the language of instruction is almost exclusively English.

PS. There are plenty of high-quality technical books in German. Widely used books like CLRS are translated to German and they have their own books such as the ones from Duden (http://www.duden.de/) which parallel the quality of their English counterparts.