Between 2009-2017 there was a fifty-fold increase in English-medium instruction (EMI) Bachelor’s degree programmes in European universities in countries which do not have English as an official language (Sandstrom & Neghina, 2017). EMI, once a novelty, is now becoming the norm.

Researchers in Applied Linguistics have responded to this phenomenon by researching teacher and student perspectives, pedagogic practices, and English for academic purposes. However, less attention has been paid to the driving factors behind this major shift in the linguistic landscape.

Current theories on the drivers of EMI suggest broad processes, such as globalisation, neoliberalism, and post-colonialism. This presentation aims to detail these processes and presents data from the ELEMENTAL project – English as the Language-of-Education Mechanisms in Europe: New Transdisciplinary Approaches in Linguistics. This project re-theorises EMI growth as an unintended consequence of government policy, specifically, steering-at-a-distance policies, which grant universities autonomy and targets.

This presentation presents quantitative data from this project and conducts multilevel/hierarchical regression to model the predictors of English-taught degree programmes in Europe. Data from over 3000 universities, across 44 countries in the European Higher Education Area are modelled, with both university-level predictors (level 1) and country-level predictors (level 2). The level 1 predictors include measures for funding, internationalisation, research intensity, and so on. The level 2 predictors include the autonomy scorecards, which measure the level of autonomy that governments grant universities in terms of finance, staffing, organisation, and academic practices.

Preliminary findings suggest that increases in autonomy in public universities are associated with an increased offer of English-taught degree programmes. These findings have implications for language education policy and management as granting greater autonomy to university systems may also result in the (potentially unintended) consequence of more EMI.

Sandström, A., & Neghina, C. (2017). English-taught bachelor’s programmes. Amsterdam, Netherlands: European Association for International Education.