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 Gilbert Guillard - President of the AILEA ( Association Internationale des LEA),
(Sorbonne Nouvelle)
About thirty years ago, a few French university professors planned to create a new course of study, which they called Foreign Applied Languages.This occurred in response to the disturbing fact that an increasing number of students who attended the classical course of study in foreign languages, that is to say literature and lingustics, had more and more difficulties in finding a suitable employment, apart from becoming themselves teachers. This was due on one side to the ever rising total number of students, which made competition more fierce, and on the other side to the fact that modern enterprises no longer could be satisfied with recruiting employees who had no knowledge of enterprise life and structure, nor the faintest hint about economical matters. The times were over, when students who had promoted with a license in literature still could get a job in a bank, starting from the bottom, but nevertheless hired because they had a university degree and skilled labour was short. These professors created also this new diploma by first making the study of two foreigne languages, instead of only one, compulsory, and by adding to this the learning of basic notions in law, economy, management, marketing, communication and data processing.
The word applied was also the key word in the title of this diploma. It meant they wanted to introduce a direct connection between the ability to speak and write very well two foreign languages and the knowledge of marketing, for example, thus bringing on the market a new profile of graduated students. As you know, we have in France the so-called Grandes Ecoles, the High schools, very renowned, very efficient and very expensive establishments, where students are formed to become top managers. They of course learn a great deal more about economics than our students do, but don’t spend so much time on learning german, spanish, russian, potuguese, italian, arabic, chinese, languages that are offered to the students at the Sorbonne Nouibelle for example, plus english of course. And they know less about the general environment in these countries – that is to say not only the enterprise culture, but the culture generally speaking of these countries. These high schools form specialists to apply for specific jobs ; we form adaptable generalists, with the double advantage for a company to then form their new recruits in the way they wish (which is made possible by the basic knowledge this students have acquired and their adaptability, due to a broad-scanned formation) and also to get them cheaper, even though our students can access later to good salaries.
The French Ministry of Education gave his approval to this new branch of studies up to the masters degree, and over the years it expanded to about 45 french universities, with abouit 50.000 students today, nearly equalizing in number the classical study course.
Now, as you know, the trend since thirty years is also increasing student mobility. The development of special programs such as Erasmus, or Erasmus Mundus, has greatly helped to boost this trend. But as you also know, there are a number of factors which make the stay abroad more or less desirable : the international reputation of the hosting university, the conditions of study, such as the size of classes, library access, computer facilities, tutoring, fees to pay –the smaller, the better, cultural environment, and last but not least, the lodging conditions. I don’t mention here weather and food quality, though this may play a role in the students choice. But one point is essential for the adventurous student who chooses to leave his Alma Mater for a semester or a year : unless he chooses to stay right up to the end and obtain his diploma abroad, the exams he passed during his stay must be taken in account on his return home and integrated in his course of study, so that he hasn’t wasted his time.
This is relatively easy to achieve when there is an agreement between the universities, but easy only when the hosting university offers not only the same field of studies, but also approximatively the same contents as the home university. But what about Foreign Applied Languages ? French universities were for a long time the only ones to offer such a mixture- call it cocktail if you want to make it more tasty- and so the french student in Peking, for example, either had to immatriculate not only at the Faculty of Foreign languages, but also at the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of economics, and so on, a procedure which turned out to be costly when possible, and not always possible – or to accept the fact that he came back with only a part of his course of study validated, and had to acquire in France the missing elements.
The solution was also obvious : create the same academic studies in foreign universities. Of course, presenting things like this is a joke. We had no intent nor the possibility to do this. There was no missionary approach. But that’s the way it finally turned out. Some universities, with whom our universities had contacts, got interested in this type of studies and called on us to visit them and see if something alike could be installed in their country. The first university to do so was Dakar in Senegal, fifteen years ago. Then came Maghreb universities (Hassan II-Mohammedia and Ibn Tofail in Morocco), then Middle East establishments ; the French University in Egypt has adopted the complete course of study, the Libanese university is starting this year a master very similar to ours ; Damascus, Lattakie, Alep in Syria, Sanaa, Taiez, Aden in Yemen, have adopted parts of the diploma in the branch of specialized translation in the fields of law, technology , management. The universities of Bucarest and Cluj in Rumania, the Ruhr University of Bochum in Germany, have created such a diploma. And the University of Human Sciences and Pedagogics in Kazan is starting this year a course of study so similar to ours that at the end of the three years, and thanks to a special convention which includes regular teaching cooperation, the students will receive not only the russian diploma, but also the one of the Sorbonne Nouivelle.
This developments should not be considered as a subtle form of cultural expansionism. It just turned out that in some countries there is a need for students who graduate with such a diploma. And I would like to point out that cooperation in this sense never was a one-way road. By discussing with our foreign colleagues about the aims and contents of this formation we learned much about how to improve it, so that last year, as we had to produce a renewed structure, for this is what our Ministry expects every four years, we integrated a few changes directly inspired by these discussions. They were quite useful to determinate, according to every local situation, which was the best combination of study domains, to what extent, and what should be the special contents. It helped us to understand in a more practical way that a diploma is both an abstract structure that can be found in many different countries in its general form, but also has to adapt to the local economical and sociological conditions
Internationalizing a diploma is just one of the many forms of cooperation. It can be considered as one of the most fruitul. The internationalization of studies around the world also means greater competition to attract students. There is now an open student” market” ; the actual share is 30% for the United States, 12% for the U.K., 11% for Germany, 10% for France and Australia, only 5% for Japan. Russia is by 3%. It is obvious that internationalizing diplomas can contribute to greater mobility . It makes things easier for the students and they still have the benefits of abroad studies : being confronted to new learning methods,to a full linguistic immersion, to a new cultural environment and to the possibility of exchanging points of wiews and know-how with the local students. The globalization of the university world can be considered under many aspects, as well positive ones or negatives. For example : is it part or cause of the decline of humanitarin education, replaced by the economical value ? Many different answers can be given, but one fact is getting more and more obvious : one cannot stay isolated, one has to join forces, both on national and international level. Doing so, one is compelled to accept the opening to other education forms, other types of course of studies, to transculturality also, which is the fundament for tolerance and respect through mutual knowledge.
The AILEA is an international association , which unites about forty french universities and a dozen foreign ones to the purpose of exchanging informations, ideas and projects about this general type of study, with openings on tourism or cultural management, ecological developments or the edition of specialized trilingual lexicas, and so forth and so on. Should you be interested, please call on me :
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Panel № 6 Educational