TODAY more top business schools and universities in France are pushing to make English the teaching tongue in a strategy to raise revenues by attracting more international students and as a way to respond to globalization, New York Times has reported.
The Lille School of Management in France stopped considering English a foreign language in 1999, and now half the postgraduate programs are taught in English.
“We are shifting to English. Why?” said Laurent Bibard, dean of MBA programs at Essec, a top French business school in a suburb of Paris. “English allows students to be able to come from any place in the world and for our students to go everywhere.”
Essec has also taken advantage of the increased revenue that foreign students ? English-speaking ones ? can bring in. With the jump in foreign students, Essec now offers 25 per cent of its 200 courses in English. Its ambition is to accelerate the English offerings to 50 per cent in the next three years.
But getting students to feel comfortable speaking English in the classroom is easier said than done. When younger French students at Essec start a required course in organizational analysis, the atmosphere is marked by long, uncomfortable silences, said Alan Jenkins, a management professor and academic director of the executive MBA program.
“They are very good on written tasks, but there’s a lot of reticence on oral communication and talking with the teacher,” Jenkins said, adding that he used role-playing to encourage students to speak.
“Internationally, the competition is everywhere,” said Christophe N. Bredillet, the associate dean for the Lille School of Management’s MBA and postgraduate programs. “For a master’s in management, I’m competing with George Washington University. I’m competing with some programs in Germany, Norway and the UK. That’s why we’re delivering the curriculum in English.”
