Internationalisation is both a goal and a process at many universities located in countries where English is not one of the official languages. Swedish universities are no exception. Internationalisation extends to research collaborations, education, and staff and student mobility. It is not just a process of reaching out to and collaborating with universities, researchers, teaching staff, and students in other countries, but it is also a process of building a safe space at home, where your co-workers and students from different cultures, countries, backgrounds can work, socialize, create, and thrive together. Like it or not, English language, as a world lingua franca, is the primary instrument to achieve this. Internationalisation starts at home – but only at the mercy of the landlord and tenants.
I work in the school of education at an emerging university which does not have a PhD programme in language studies (of any kind). The administrative language is Swedish, and the medium of instruction for the compulsory courses in the PhD programme in Didactics (?) is Swedish (I have to note that, though, I have fantastic colleagues, admin staff and academics, who have always been flexible with the use of English – and this is one of the reasons I love them and this workplace). Needless to say, a university has all the rights to decide on the medium of administration and teaching, fair enough. But the problem starts when “internationalisation” becomes one of the goals in the institution, which requires deconstructing local structures and institutional habits. In other words, in transforming from a local university college (a högskola, remember?) to a university (i.e. an international workplace), you need to open a can of worms.
Where do you start? The language of meetings, creating courses in English for Erasmus and other exchange students, the medium of communication in research events, emails, announcements, fika conversations… How do you make sure that you are not excluding Swedish speakers who do not speak English (personal note: I have not seen any), or English speakers who cannot speak Swedish (I have seen many). How do you recruit international PhD students? (surprise surprise: put the ad out in English, create courses in English). One of the arguments I hear is that “educational research” is for teachers and is local, for local needs, so things need to be in Swedish. So educational science (as opposed to other sciences) should be freed from English and internationalisation? How about poor engineers doing their Phd in English then? Should we also stop anything that is in English for them too? Good luck with that. The second argument is that we may damage “Swedish as a scientific language” with too much English. My argument, in response to all this, is that English and Swedish can co-exist in Swedish higher education. A healthy co-existence will create a university for all, and a university that will combine global perspectives with local needs.
Olcay Sert 