Slovenian Higher Education Language Policy: Views on the Use of Languages and Recommendations for Its Regulation

Abstract

Since the Bologna reform, internationalization has become one of the priorities of the European higher-education system. The main Slovenian higher education policy documents show that the concept was promptly adopted, that it is trongly correlated with the aim of improving higher education quality and profits, but far too often it remained just a key word without exact explication of its content and deliberate systemic solutions for its implementation. One of the aspects of internationalization of Slovenian higher education system that lacks an elaborate planning strategy, systematic policy regulation, as well as resources for its implementation is the use of languages of instruction. The paper presents some of the results of the research that the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport supported with the goal of overcoming this deficit and forming short- and long- term measures for language policy in Slovenian higher education. Methodologically, the survey consisted of: a comparative study of (highereducation) language policy documents in Slovenia and other European countries and of language-use strategies and practice at selected European public universities; a survey of language use in the higher-education process among students and instructors of the three Slovenian public universities and interviews with their chancellors and with deans of selected faculties. The results of the comparative study show that language use in higher education in many European countries is at least at the state level substantially deregulated. Big nations tend to conduct the first three years of academic study predominantly in national languages, while they increase the number of courses held in English at the master's level. The Nordic countries have the highest share of courses held in English, while for countries that are sociolinguistically most similar to Slovenia, a discrepancy between strict regulations of national language use on the one hand and deviations from these norms in practice on the other are characteristic. The data obtained by questionnaires show that Slovenian university instructors and students unanimously agree that Slovene should remain the dominant language of Slovenian higher education, while courses with high-quality content in English should be offered to foreign students and to those Slovene students whoare willing to attend them. One of the greatest problems of the actual Slovenian internationalization process has shown to be its financing, which makes carrying out entire parallel programs in Slovene and English almost impossible. Consequently, the choice of classes accessible to foreign studentsis often very limited or study activities performed in English are restricted to contact hours in the class or other individual forms of work. Onthe other hand, Slovene students have shown considerable reluctance to attending courses in English held by Slovene professors. In the opinion of some of the interviewed policy-makers, a constructive solution to this problemwould be the formation of a limited number of special English modules for different fields (e.g., for the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences). These modules would be designed at the university level and would represent a selection of its top quality and most attractive content. According to the research results, the authors propose two possible lines of language policy in Slovenian higher education. The first possibility is to maintain the current legislative framework, based upon Slovene language as a social value, but also to secure finances to enable the full realization of its potentials. The other solution is deregulation that would transfer the responsibility for language-use regulation from the state to individual highereducation institutions. The authors also propose guidelines for strategies of language policies and their implementation that could be adapted to the particularities and special needs of individual institutions