Bilingual educational policy in higher education in the basque country

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Bilingual educational policy in higher education in the Basque Country Jasone Cenoz

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Department of Research Methods in Education , University of the Basque Country , Donostia-San Sebastián , Spain Published online: 07 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Jasone Cenoz (2012) Bilingual educational policy in higher education in the Basque Country, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 25:1, 41-55, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2011.653057 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2011.653057

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Language, Culture and Curriculum Vol. 25, No. 1, March 2012, 41–55

Bilingual educational policy in higher education in the Basque Country Jasone Cenoz∗

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Department of Research Methods in Education, University of the Basque Country, Donostia-San Sebastia´n, Spain (Received 25 September 2011; final version received 21 December 2011) This paper examines issues related to the important impact of language policy in the Basque Country in recent decades. Basque, a minority language that was not allowed in the public space until the late 1970s, is an official language along with Spanish in the Basque Autonomous Community. The development of Basque has been most significant in education where it is not only a school subject but also the main language of instruction for most children. The paper briefly summarises this development and then moves to a focus on the use of Basque at the university level.

The legal and organisational bases supporting the use of Basque are explained as well as the challenges faced by a minority language in higher education. The paper discusses the tension between internationalisation and the use of Basque for teaching and research in higher education.

Keywords: higher education; multilingualism; Basque; multilingual education; minority languages

Introduction This paper focuses on the use of European minority languages in higher education with particular attention to the use of Basque as the language of instruction. The 1998 Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of the Council of Europe defines minority languages as: languages that are traditionally used within a given territory of a state by nationals of that state who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the state’s population and [are] different from the official language(s) in the last state.

This definition, which excludes immigrant languages and dialects of official state languages, has gained currency in recent years.

A minority language is not defined by the number of speakers because this depends on its relative position vis-a`-vis the state language. Within the European context, a language like Catalan with approximately 7.3 million speakers is a minority language, while languages such as Latvian, Slovenian, Estonian or Maltese have fewer speakers but are state languages and official languages of the European Union. In fact there is a great diversity regarding the size of minority languages, but most European minority languages are ∗

Email: jasone.cenoz@ehu.es

ISSN 0790-8318 print/ISSN 1747-7573 online # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2011.653057 http://www.tandfonline.com

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small and many of them are regarded as ‘endangered’ or ‘vulnerable’ in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley, 2010). The size of a minority language can have important implications in education not only because of the effect of numerical strength on language policy but also because greater numbers can lead to more qualified teachers and to the development of educational materials in the minority language. Students will also have more opportunities for exposure to the minority language when the language is spoken by a large number of people.

Minority languages in Europe are also diverse regarding their geographical spread and the status they hold in different countries. Gorter and Cenoz (2011) consider three types.

One type is minority languages with a kin state, that is, languages that are minority languages in one state but dominant languages in a neighbouring state. For example, German is a minority language in Belgium and Italy, but the state language in Austria and Germany. A second type is often referred to as unique minority languages. This is the situation of languages such as Galician, Catalan, Frisian, Basque or Welsh. They are spoken in one or more states as minority languages but they are not the dominant language of any state. A third category would be that of official state languages that can be regarded in terms of their demography and use as minority languages. This would be the case of Irish or Luxemburgish (see Harris, 2008). The geographical spread of minority languages can have an important effect on education because when a minority language is spoken as the national language of another country, a large number of resources such as textbooks or other educational materials can be used. Even in cases when the number of speakers of the minority language in one state is small, there might be more possibilities of exposure to the language than in the case of unique minorities.

In Europe, there are important differences regarding the recognition of minority languages and the policies to protect and develop the use of these languages. The status of minority languages can also change over time because of political and social changes in different states. For example, languages such as Galician, Catalan or Basque acquired a co-official status alongside Spanish in the late 1970s. As a result, policies for reinforcing their use in domains including education have been developed. Two of these minority languages, Catalan and Basque, are also spoken in France where the policy to protect them is much weaker. In this way, Catalan and Basque are compulsory school subjects and are often the medium of instruction in Catalonia and the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) but not in the French areas where these languages are spoken.

Minority languages in Europe can also vary depending on their origin and linguistic characteristics (Cenoz & Gorter, 2008). Language distance can have important implications in mutual comprehension and language policy. When the minority and the majority languages are typologically different from each other, such as in the case of Basque and Spanish or Welsh and English, it is more common to have the possibility of choosing the language of instruction. When the languages are closer to each other, as in the case of Catalan and Spanish, it is possible to use the minority language to a larger extent as the language of instruction for all students.

Speakers of minority languages in Europe are in almost all cases bi- or multilingual. They usually learn the state language from an early age and in many cases also learn an international language such as English when this is not the state language. Speakers of minority languages often feel that their languages are part of their identity, and they try to maintain and promote their language even when they can communicate in the state language. The experiences of minority language users, however, are often not well known outside the areas of use.

This paper analyses the use of a minority language, Basque, in higher education by examining the specific challenges faced by Basque and other minority languages when

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used for language teaching and research at the university. It also focuses on challenges that are shared by many universities where English is increasingly used as an additional language of instruction.

The next section examines the use of minority languages in education, with a focus on the use of Basque. Then the main issues related to the use of a minority language for teaching and research in higher education are discussed, followed by an explanation of the challenges faced by the University of the Basque Country (Universidad del PaĹ´s Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, UPV/EHU henceforth) as an example.

Minority languages in education Bilingual education in many regions where minority languages are spoken has existed for many years (see, for example, Baker, 2011; Mercator dossiers, Mercator, 2011). Over the years these programmes have developed educational policies in different areas including syllabus design, bilingual literacy practices, teaching strategies or assessment.

Gorter and Cenoz (2011) point out the possibilities for educational programmes (Figure 1). Teaching approaches for minority languages can range from a strong position for the minority as the main language of instruction to the very weak position of exclusion with no provision for the minority language in the curriculum. The most common positions are intermediate, that is, to study the minority language as a subject or as the language of instruction only for some subjects.

Apart from these possibilities, there are also important differences regarding the level of education. The size of the sections in the pyramid in Figure 2 represents these differences by showing that it is more common to have some type of tuition in minority languages in kindergarten and primary levels than in higher levels. An example of this situation is Frisian in the Netherlands (Gorter & van der Meer, 2008). The use of minority languages at the university level is not very common because the main challenge in some regions is to establish the minority language as an ofďŹ cial subject in the primary and secondary levels.

This is the case, for example, of Kashubian in Poland (Wicherkiewicz, 2004).

Regions with stronger policies to promote minority language, such as Wales (Lewis, 2008; Williams, 2010), Catalonia (Vila, 2008) or the Basque Country (Cenoz, 2008), are increasingly using the minority language as the language of instruction. In these regions, both pupils who speak the minority language as an L1 and speakers with the majority language as an L1 increasingly learn through the medium of Welsh, Catalan or Basque.

In this way, the target learner group has expanded, from L1 speakers to include students who learn the minority language as a second language (L2). In these regions, the minority language can be used as the medium of instruction from kindergarten to the university but there are remarkable differences regarding the extent of its use, Catalan being the most widely used.

The Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Council of Europe, 1998) refers in Article 8.1e to higher education as a domain where the use of minority languages should be protected and developed:

Figure 1.

Role of the minority language in education.

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Figure 2.

Educational levels and minority languages.

(1) to make available university and other higher education in regional or minority languages; or (2) to provide facilities for the study of these languages as university and higher education subjects; or (3) if, by reason of the role of the State in relation to higher education institutions, subparagraphs i and ii cannot be applied, to encourage and/or allow the provision of university or other forms of higher education in regional or minority languages or of facilities for the study of these languages as university or higher education subjects.

In spite of these provisions, very few universities use a minority language as the language of instruction in Europe, outside specialised language and linguistics departments. This is certainly the case of unique minorities that are not majority state languages. One significant exception is the use of Basque in higher education.

Basque in education The Basque Country spreads along the Bay of Biscay, north and south of the Pyrenees in France and Spain. The population of the Basque Country is approximately three million and approximately two-thirds of the population live in the BAC in Spain. In this region, Basque is a minority language which has survived along with Spanish. The most recent sociolinguistic survey indicates 557,600 speakers, or 30.1% of the population aged 16 or older (Basque Government, 2008). There are 339,600 people (18.3%) in the BAC who can understand Basque but do not speak it fluently. With few exceptions, all these speakers are also fluent in Spanish. Basque is an official language of the BAC along with Spanish and in recent decades there has been a strong language policy to try to promote its knowledge and use in different domains (see also Azurmendi & Martı´nez de Luna, 2005). However, Basque is still included in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger in the category of ‘vulnerable’ (Moseley, 2010) although the number of speakers has increased substantially in the last two decades, from 24.1% in 1991 to 30.1% in 2006 (Basque Government, 2008). The use of Basque as the language of instruction has played an important role in this change.

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Some schools in the BAC were already bilingual or even trilingual (in Basque, Spanish and French) at the end of the nineteenth century. The use of Basque was banned from education during the Franco regime (1939– 1975) but since the 1960s a number of private Basque-medium schools have existed. These schools were not officially recognised in the beginning, but they were finally accepted because they had attracted so many students that they could not be ignored. In 1982, Basque became an official language of instruction along with Spanish. Basque could be either a school subject or the language of instruction.

Three models of language schooling were established. All the models had Basque, Spanish and a foreign language (generally English) as school subjects and differed by having either Basque, Spanish or both languages as languages of instruction. Basque L1 speakers usually have Basque as the language of instruction but currently Spanish is the L1 for a large number of students for whom Basque is the language of instruction. In 2010– 2011, 58.8% of primary and secondary schoolchildren in the BAC had Basque as the language of instruction and 22.3% had both Basque and Spanish as the languages of instruction.

That means that only about one-fifth (18.9%) were in Spanish-medium classes. Unlike many other regions where minority languages are used only in primary school, Basque is also the main language of instruction in secondary school.

According to the 2006 sociolinguistic survey, 60.6% of the children in the BAC only speak Spanish at home, but as we have seen, only 18.9% of primary and secondary schoolchildren have Spanish as the only language of instruction. There can be different reasons for this preference for Basque. Some Basque L1 speakers may want to exercise the right to use their home language in education. In the case of L1 Spanish speakers, there can be reasons of identity because the family background is Basque but the parents did not have the opportunity to learn Basque and want their children to learn the language. There are also practical reasons such as the advantages of being bilingual for the job market and the quality of Basque-medium education. Yet, the increase in the use of Basque as the language of instruction has faced many challenges. As Zalbide and Cenoz (2008) point out, there have been important advances in teachers’ proficiency in Basque and the development of teaching and learning materials in Basque but there are still serious problems with language use.

The problem of language use is a general problem for Basque in the BAC because Basque speakers can also communicate in Spanish, but Spanish speakers cannot understand Basque. A 2006 survey indicated that only 9.9% of the population use more Basque than Spanish (Basque Government, 2008). Another study based on observation of the use of Basque by 185,316 people on the streets carried out in 2006 indicates that 14.2% of the people use Basque (Altuna, 2007).

In recent years there has been a shift from bilingualism to multilingualism in Basque education and English is also increasingly used as an additional language of instruction (Cenoz, 2009). The result is that L1 speakers of Basque have their home language as the language of instruction, learn Spanish by being exposed to the majority language and as a school subject, and have a third language, English, not only as a primary school subject but often also as the medium of instruction for a few subjects in secondary school. Spanish L1 speakers learn Basque when they have Basque as the language of instruction but in all cases study Basque and Spanish as school subjects. They also study English as a school subject and in many cases as the language of instruction. Basque L1 and Spanish L1 speakers who have Basque as the language of instruction are together in the same classes.

The extended use of Basque in primary and secondary school creates the need to use Basque – at least to some extent – in higher education because many students want to go on having the same language of instruction as in secondary school. The entrance test

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for university education can be taken in Basque or Spanish, and the percentage of students who have taken and passed the university entrance examination in Basque rather than in Spanish has been increasing (Figure 3).

Students in the BAC try to get accepted in the universities that are close to their family home and in many cases they live with their parents while at university. This means that most of the students who had Basque as the language of instruction in secondary school and took the university entrance examination in Basque prefer to have Basque as the language of instruction at the university as well. Most of these students attend the UPV/ EHU or one of the private universities in the BAC (University of Deusto and University of Mondragon). In Figure 4 we can see the increase since 1998 in the number of students learning through Basque in the first year of undergraduate studies at the UPV/EHU. The UPV/EHU is the only public university in the BAC. It was created in 1980 and it is one of the biggest universities in Spain with over 57,000 students. It has faculties and colleges in Bizkaia (Bilbao and Leioa), Gipuzkoa (Donostia-San Sebastian and Eibar) and Vitoria-Gasteiz. The university has developed three plans for the promotion of Basque and has gradually become a bilingual university (Irazusta, 2010). According to official

Figure 3. University entrance examination percentages.

Source: University of the Basque Country (2010).

Figure 4. Percentage of first-year university students learning through Basque.

Source: University of the Basque Country (2010).

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Statutes, Basque and Spanish are official languages of the university, which is to pay special attention to the Basque language and Basque culture (BOPV, 24 February 2011). The statutes recognise the right to use Basque or Spanish for teaching and assessment and also for research and publications without excluding the possibility of using other languages.

It is possible for students to choose either Basque or Spanish as the language of instruction for compulsory subjects at the UPV/EHU. Close to half of the undergraduates choose Basque as the language of instruction (Irazusta, 2010); the rest of the students have Spanish as the language of instruction. Most compulsory subjects are offered in both Basque and Spanish, but there are differences in specific fields of study. In 2009 –2010 only 28.7% of the students in the first year of Technical Studies had Basque as the language of instruction, compared with 34.7% in Health Science, 44.5% in Humanities, 45.4% in Experimental Science and 48.3% in Social Science. The trend to use the minority language more often in Humanities and Social Sciences is shared by universities in Wales (Williams, 2010).

Students can take all their optional courses through the medium of Basque in some subjects but in others they still need to take courses in Spanish to complete the required number of credits. This situation does not create any linguistic problem for the students because Basque-speaking students are also fluent in Spanish. Since 2005 there have been optional courses taught through the medium of English as well.

There are also differences between the undergraduate and graduate levels. Undergraduate studies (BA) are four years in Spain and at this level, there are more courses offered through the medium of Basque in the first and second years than in the third and fourth years. In 2010– 2011, 90% of the compulsory courses at the undergraduate level were offered through the medium of Basque as well. Most Masters level courses are taught through the medium of Spanish, but Basque and English are also used to a lesser extent.

The importance of English as a language of global communication and the language of science and technology can also be seen in the language policy of the UPV/EHU. The Statutes also encourage the use of languages other than Basque and Spanish for teaching and research. Nowadays over 130 courses are taught though the medium of English and it is likely that the use of English at the postgraduate level will become more important in the coming years. This is still a very modest use of English as compared with the total number of courses at the university or as compared with universities in many other European countries but it is increasing every year. Most courses taught through the medium of English are in economics and business studies, technical studies and experimental sciences.

Challenges to teaching and research in Basque The use of Basque at the university faces many challenges – some related to its status as a minority language. However, other challenges, particularly those linked to the spread of English in higher education and the use of a language other than the L1 for teaching and research, are faced also by universities in regions where minority languages are not used.

In this section, I discuss the challenges as related to the corpus of the Basque language, teaching conditions, research issues and the use of Basque at the institutional level.

Corpus of the Basque language Corpus planning, which involves ‘efforts related to the adequacy of the form or structure of languages/literacies’ (Hornberger, 2006, p. 28), is one of the key elements in language policy. This area is extremely important in the case of minority languages, which have often been used in the private rather than in the public domain and frequently have weak

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written traditions. The Basque standard variety ‘euskara batua’ (‘unified Basque’) was developed in the 1960s and its use has spread to education, institutions and the media (Hualde & Zuazo, 2007). Other varieties are also used in oral communication. The limitations of Basque as a minority language with regard to becoming a language of education and culture were sometimes highlighted in the past (see examples in Jimeno Jurı´o, 1998).

Even though Basque is the medium of instruction at all levels of education and for subjects such as mathematics, social science, chemistry or physics, negative statements like ‘it is an ancient language little suited to contemporary life’ can still be heard (Barrera in Johnson, 2007).

In the last 30 years there has been an ongoing process to standardise Basque. The use of Basque for higher functions in society goes along with the development of the corpus of the language.

A large number of general and specialised dictionaries and grammars have been published in recent decades and several corpora of the language have been compiled. The general corpus of Basque in the twentieth century contains 4,658,036 words from texts published between 1900 and 1995. Another corpus called ‘reference corpus’ covers the period 2000 – 2007 and contains 25.1 million words from published books, newspapers and magazines (www.ehu.es/euskara-orria/euskara/ereduzkoa/). The specific Corpus for Science and Technology (www.ztcorpusa.net) contains 8.5 million words from publications in the years 1990 – 2002. All these corpora (most available on-line) illustrate the use of different terms in context and the frequency of use of the different terms and, therefore, provide assistance in the process of academic writing in Basque. There are also specialised dictionaries and a large number of software resources, including Euskalterm, an online database to translate terms from English, French, Latin and Spanish into Basque (www1.euskadi.net/ euskalterm).

In spite of these resources, the limited number of textbooks and other teaching materials in Basque is still one of the main challenges of teaching through the medium of Basque at the university. A wide range of books exists about different academic topics published by the UPV/EHU, other universities and independent publishers, but there are still insufficient materials in Basque in some areas such as experimental sciences, technical studies and health sciences. The UPV/EHU favours the publishing of books in Basque and approximately 40% of the books and 20% of the journals published directly by the university are in Basque. Electronic materials are also being produced as a more economical and practical way to make more Basque materials available. Translation of textbooks from other languages is also a priority.

Today there are more resources to teach through the medium of Basque than ever in history. At the same time, the resources are extremely limited when compared with what is available in other languages – especially English in this age of technology and globalisation.

Teaching conditions One of the problems the UPV/EHU faces nowadays is the limited number of staff qualified to teach through the medium of Basque. There are 1820 professors, lecturers and researchers who have the qualifications to teach through the medium of Basque, but this is only 34% of the academic staff (University of the Basque Country, 2010). Thus, there is a mismatch between the percentage of students who register for courses taught in Basque and the percentage of academic staff who can teach in Basque. As compared with primary and secondary education, the use of Basque as the language of instruction is more difficult at the university because the number of courses is much larger and courses are highly specialised.

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The policy to increase the number of bilingual professors and lecturers is mainly implemented through retirements and new contracts. The majority of those retiring in the next few years are monolingual. Proficiency in Basque is a requirement for most new jobs, and a certificate of proficiency in Basque is a requirement for teaching through the medium of Basque. In some cases lecturers without a PhD have been hired because of the urgent need to hire Basque-speaking staff. There are special grants for PhD theses written in Basque, and Basque- and Spanish-speaking staff can apply for a leave of absence to finish their PhD theses. The university also offers grants for teaching staff to take Basque language classes.

Academic staff also need to be qualified to teach through the medium of English. There is a specific English language exam for this purpose, but academic staff can also qualify if they have taught courses through the medium of English at the university level in other countries or have certificates of English. For the time being there are over 500 lecturers/professors qualified to teach through the medium of a foreign language, mainly English. No qualifications are required to teach through the medium of Spanish at the university because Spanish proficiency is assumed.

Those qualified to teach through the medium of Basque or English are also capable of teaching in Spanish. In some cases bilingual instructors have an additional burden because they have to teach more credits and courses, sometimes in different faculties and colleges.

As we have seen, they also have access to fewer materials published in Basque and very often need to prepare their own specialised materials in a language which is not completely standardised. However, Basque-medium professors and lecturers also have some advantages. Teaching and publishing through the medium of Basque can give the teachers extra points for internal promotion. Moreover, only Basque speakers have access to jobs that have been approved as bilingual posts.

Academic staff who are teaching through the medium of Basque receive support from the Basque language service, including recommendations about the use of Basque, help with handouts and presentations, and access to reference texts and specialised dictionaries.

Those teaching through the medium of English can take a specific short language course on interactional oral skills in the classroom so as to help them with communication with the students. They also get some support to translate and review their teaching materials and for the first two years the number of credits they teach in English or other languages count double for their total number of required teaching hours.

Students do not need certificates to take courses through the medium of Basque or English but they very often take external examinations so as to get language certificates that are needed in the job market. Students who take subjects through the medium of Basque can take an optional subject, ‘Technical Basque’ (Basque for special purposes), so as to get a better knowledge of the specific terminology of their studies.

Some students who choose to take courses taught through the medium of English have already had English as the language of instruction for some subjects in secondary school (see Cenoz, 2009). For others who have studied English only as a subject in primary and secondary school, English as the language of instruction is a new experience. There are different reasons for local students to choose English-medium courses. According to the ‘Multilingualism Plan’ that started in 2005 (University of the Basque Country, 2011), the purpose of adding English as the language of instruction is to foster mobility and participation in the European Higher Education Area. By having some courses taught through the medium of English, students can get ready to study in universities in other European countries and they are better trained for the labour market.

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Research challenges The use of Basque in research is not common. Most PhD theses are written in Spanish (78% in the academic year 2009 – 2010). The distribution of theses defended in the three different languages is shown in Table 1. There is a special call for grants for doctorate theses in Basque that gives advantage to candidates in Technical Studies, which is the area with the greatest shortages of teaching staff qualified in Basque.

It is an achievement for a minority language to have 24 doctoral theses defended in one year, but still we can see that this is only 7.7% of the total number of theses. Figure 5 shows the increasing number of doctoral theses in English since 2003 – 2004 and also the moderate increase in the number of theses in Basque.

The UPV/EHU press publishes books, journals and other materials. Official publications and catalogues are bilingual in Basque and Spanish, but 43% of the textbooks published in the academic year 2009– 2010 were in Basque. So far, publications of textbooks and research studies in Basque have had some additional value for promotional purposes.

The efforts to use a minority language for teaching and research in higher education come at a time when access to information and dissemination of science and technology is highly dependent on the knowledge of English. Research conducted in the Basque Country has to be related to research in other countries and its impact is higher if it is published in English.

Basque is also used in publications that could be referred to as ‘popular science’.

For example, the ZIO (Zientzia Irakurle Ororentzat – Science for any reader) collection

Table 1. Language of doctoral theses by area of study: 2009–2010.

Basque Experimental, Health Sciences and Technology Social Science and Humanities

9 (4.7%)

Spanish

English

Total

143 (74.1%) 41 (21.2%) 193 (100%)

15 (11.7%) 108 (84.4%) 5 (3.9%) 128 (100%) 24 (7.5%) 251 (78.2%) 46 (14.3%) 321 (100%)

Source: University of the Basque Country (2010).

Figure 5. Doctoral theses in Basque and English.

Source: University of the Basque Country (2010).

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already has 12 volumes on different areas such as mathematics, neuroscience, biology or linguistics. This collection is aimed at a general audience.

The use of the Basque language at the institutional level Communication at the UPV/EHU takes place in both Basque and Spanish and occasionally in English. In addition to the academic staff, there are approximately 1775 employees with differing qualifications depending on their jobs, including librarians, lawyers, secretaries, translators, technicians, computer experts, clerks, etc. The regulations for supporting staff regarding the learning and assessment of Basque at the UPV/EHU are the same as for civil servants in the Basque Government, county governments and town halls in the BAC. Support staff need to achieve a specific level of proficiency – a ‘linguistic profile’ – depending on the characteristics of their job. Forty per cent of the jobs for support staff have one of the specific levels of Basque as a requirement (Irazusta, 2010). The levels range from the Common European Framework B1 level to the C2 level (Council of Europe, 2001). The distribution among the different levels is shown in Table 2.

The percentages indicate that 1136 employees (64%) have achieved one of the levels but not necessarily the highest ones. Staff can attend courses during working hours for several hours per day. There are also other resources such as the online programme ‘AZPidazki’ to facilitate the use of Basque when writing documents as well as support for editing and translation.

Teaching through minority languages: future perspectives The development of a strong language policy to protect and promote the use of Basque in higher education and in the BAC in general has resulted in the spread of the use of Basque at the university. The use of a minority language as the language of instruction and in some cases as the language of research has had a positive effect on the corpus and status of the language. At the same time, the use of a minority language for functions that have traditionally been carried out by the majority language faces many challenges that have been explained in this paper. These challenges change over time because multilingual contexts are dynamic and affected by the development of languages in society. When Basque was starting to be used in higher education 30 years ago, one of the main challenges was the standardisation of the language and the availability of teaching materials. Now many textbooks and other publications including on-line resources are available. The situation has improved enormously even though it cannot be compared with the availability of materials in the case of majority languages.

One of the most important challenges to the use of Basque (and other minority languages) today is internationalisation and the use of English. The intensity of the use Table 2. Linguistic profile of support staff.

Proficiency Level No Basque or below B1 B1 B2 C1 C2 Total Source: University of the Basque Country (2010).

n (%) 639 178 555 372 31 1175

(36%) (10%) (31.2%) (21%) (1.8%)

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of English in higher education has been increasing. English is the main language of science and technology and most academic books and journals on any subject are published in English (see Carli & Ammon [2007] for a criticism of this situation). As scientific publications are highly specialised, they are rarely translated into other languages and nonEnglish publications have very limited circulation. Students who are not proficient in English only have access to publications in other languages and this is a very serious problem in most areas, and the problem gets worse when scholars themselves cannot have access to publications in English.

There are other reasons why English in higher education is very important. One is that student mobility has an increasing importance in Europe and English is the language shared by students of different countries. Another reason is the increasing need to speak English in the labour market.

The position of Basque at the university together with the new challenge of internationalisation are frequently discussed at the UPV/EHU and different positions or even different ‘imagined universities’ can be distinguished in different bodies of opinion. On the one hand, there is position A, ‘Reinforce Basque’, which aims at the reinforcement of Basque because it is felt that Basque is still very weak and the policy to protect the Basque language has not been strong enough. This position considers the achievements to date to be very modest. One of the problems highlighted by this position is that in practice Basque speakers do not have the right to ‘live in Basque’, that is to use Basque for all purposes at the university. Sometimes they cannot have all the courses through the medium of Basque and even if they do, they often have to switch to Spanish in daily communication when their interlocutors do not speak Basque. There is also concern about codemixing and codeswitching and the quality of Basque when it is mixed with Spanish, even though these phenomena are characteristic of bilingual contexts (Li & Wu, 2009). There is also a trend to use a lot of Spanish in informal conversation even in classes where Basque is the language of instruction. Some complaints about the importance of international publications in English for the promotion of academic staff as compared with publications in Basque can also be heard (Isasi, 2004). The position of reinforcing Basque without internationalisation is sometimes seen as a romantic, idealistic position removed from life in a multilingual and globalised world (Mees, 2010).

A second position, B, ‘Reinforce internationalisation’, considers the need to foster mobility and to spread the use of English as a tool to make the university more international. This position concludes that the special policy to encourage the use of Basque in teaching and research has gone too far and that the priority should be internationalisation rather than ‘Basquisation’. This position is not completely unitary regarding the Basque language. For some, Basque is seen as incompatible with modern life and may be an obstacle to working outside the Basque Country. Others do not oppose the Basque language in a direct way but question the amount of support for it. Another criticism that has been made is that the quality of teaching through the medium of Basque is lower than in Spanish because there is less competition to gain positions. It is also proposed that the extra points that teaching and publishing in Basque have in promotion should be reduced. This position is often seen as an effort to promote Spanish rather than internationalisation at the expense of Basque.

A third position, C, ‘Reinforce Basque and Internationalisation’, has a strong commitment to both Basque and internationalisation. This is the official position that the UPV/EHU has had in recent years. The strong position supporting Basque does not get as far as position A, but clearly supports the teaching and research in Basque while at the same time highlighting the importance of international publications and mobility. The idea is that the university becomes more multilingual by using different languages for different

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functions and situations (Mees, 2010). This intermediate position is probably the most challenging of the three because it is difficult to agree on different uses for the different languages. In the case of teaching, it combines having Basque or Spanish as the main language of instruction with having some undergraduate courses taught through the medium of English and more courses taught in English for graduate studies. In the case of research, the idea is to use English, Basque and Spanish for scientific publications and to reinforce the role of Basque for ‘popular science’. This distribution is, however, problematic because it does not solve the difficulties associated with the external evaluation of research published in Basque. The impact of publications in Spanish depends on the area but in the case of experimental and technical studies, impact is very limited for publications in languages other than English.

Final remarks The UPV/EHU is moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and the use of Basque, Spanish and English in higher education combines the protection and promotion of a minority language with the need for internationalisation. Teaching through a minority language at the university level poses many more challenges than teaching through the medium of English because the use of academic Basque goes hand in hand with the development of its corpus. The use of English at the University is still very modest compared with some other European universities (see also Fortanet-Go´mez & Ra¨isa¨nen, 2008; Wilkinson & Zegers, 2006) but it aims to integrate three languages by moving from bilingualism into multilingualism.

The development of the university’s multilingual policy over the last 30 years is reflected in language practices that are changing. The traditional way to use Basque and Spanish in official written documents has been the ‘bilingual policy’, that is, the use of the same text in Basque and Spanish next to each other. This was regulated by the former Statutes of the university (BOPV, 12 January 2004) and is still the most common way to show the co-official level of the languages. This policy was followed in formal speeches as well, with simultaneous interpretation of one language into the other. This policy of duplication is also widespread outside the university.

In recent years, however, there has been a trend to change this practice so as not to ‘duplicate’ the languages. The new Statutes (BOPV, 24 February 2011) regulate a strong policy to support the Basque language at the university but do not include the obligation to use the ‘duplication policy’. Currently, there is less duplication of languages both in teaching and in institutional use. This can be seen in the case of courses taught through the medium of Basque, Spanish or English. The idea is that multilingual speakers have more choices and can take more courses. The policy of non-duplication was evident in formal speeches by the Rector of the university, who switched between Basque and Spanish (and even English), which meant that multilingual speakers could understand the whole speech while monolingual speakers could only understand part of it unless there was simultaneous interpretation.

The development of sophisticated policies to encourage the use of Basque in higher education and the challenge of combining these policies with internationalisation are not unproblematic. The case of Basque, however, can contribute to the discussion of bilingual and multilingual policies in other universities in contexts where minority languages and/or languages of wider communication are increasingly being used.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology [research grant EDU2009-11601], the Research Unit Education, Culture and Society [UFI 11/54] and by the

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Basque Government for the research group ‘Donostia Research on Education and Multilingualism’ (DREAM) [grant IT-362-10].

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