ABSTRACT
Higher education is arguably one of the domains most affected by globalisation and, hence, by mobility. And since, as Van Parijs observes, “it is English and English alone that can reasonably claim to have become a global lingua franca” (2011: 11), it is not surprising that the globalisation of higher education, that is, the dissemination of knowledge in post-secondary education on a global scale, is taking place principally in English. Thus, ‘the globalisation of higher education’ is generally understood to mean ‘the globalisation of higher education in English’. As a direct result, a fast-growing amount of university content teaching is being conducted in English medium in countries where English is not the first, or even official, language. And while English medium teaching in such countries is often designed to attract students from elsewhere, a substantial proportion of those being taught in English may comprise non-mobile local students such as Chinese and Japanese students studying academic subjects in English medium in, respectively, Chinese and Japanese universities. In global higher education, perhaps more than any other domain, we can therefore talk of mobility in two senses: those of both mobile people and mobile language. For although we tend to think of the two as going hand in hand, and language travelling with people, where higher education is concerned it is increasingly the case that the language, English, ‘travels’ while many people remain in situ either in locally run English medium instruction (EMI) universities or in ‘branches’ (also known as ‘offshore campuses’) of other, predominantly Anglophone-led institutions.
