National universities using....English?!
This morning, before I left for work, an article caught my eye in my RSS reader from Inside Higher Education (amazingly, they gave me enough of a blurb to want to read the article - usually they don't!). The article is about an Italian University that is going English-Only for their instruction . This article is an interesting read (I can't wait until the comments start coming in). My initial reaction was one of being taken aback. Why the heck would a national university use a language for instruction that IS NOT the language of the country? My secondary reaction was one of opportunity (Imagine old style cartoons with dollar signs in the character's eyes ;-) ). Since English is a language that I understand very well, and obviously use on a daily basis, I thought that this is an opportunity for people like me to work in other countries and at the same time not have to worry about attaining an Academic Language Proficiency in the national la...