Engineering students argue for a Master’s program taught exclusively in English: “The working language on the work floor is English.”

19 comments

  1. When I graduated, all of my course contents (slides, books, ..) were written in English and much of the lingo was in English either way, seemed like a no brainer to me to just teach it in English too

  3. ik denk dat het op dat niveau een hol uitmaakt of dat nu engels of nederlands is. de capaciteit zelfstudie van deze studenten op de werkvloer zal zeker hoog genoeg zijn om zowel het Nederlands als Engels volledig onder de knie te hebben. (en mogelijks nog wat extra talen)
    Dit is gewoon een vreemde flex en een storm in een glas.

  4. Programming is almost exclusively in English.

    Gets taught in dutch just fine.

    Because people know English. And can just… use it…

    Seriously, is there a problem here? Or does someone want a media hetze for some reason?

  5. At VUB there is an English and a Dutch variant, but for the Dutch one there are no students signed up.

  6. In 2009 the minors in engineering were in English. The quality of the Prof and students was so poor they would educate in dutch if there were no erasmus students.

  8. Did an English civil engineering master (vub/ULB) and can confirm, the language on the work floor is not necessarily English …

    Don’t know what the fuz is about.

  9. Much as I like pragmatism and cost savings…I would find it very unreasonable if people in Flanders are not able to pursue a master in their own official language?

  13. Funny, the English sentence in the title shows they need indeed more English courses. Shop floor is the common term or workplace, not the work floor.

  14. A couple of my courses were available in both languages. The theory sessions were the same and given in english. The only difference is the practical sessions. Most people pick the dutch version because then you don’t have to partner up with exchange students for your project. Because those are pretty hit or miss.

  15. Ja, laten we van België een 4 talig land maken. Dafuq zelfs. Is ne scheet groot en draait zo vierkant als de pest.

  16. Hangt er wel een beetje vanaf welke richting je doet. In de computer science master zal nederlands wellicht overbodig zijn aangezien alle termen erg internationaal gestandardiseerd zijn. Maar bij bvb bouwkunde zijn Nederlandse en Franse woordenschat wel van belang.

  17. I was convinced that it was a good thing to transform our higher education into English taught courses. But I have overheard some pretty good arguments that strive to keep them in dutch.

    First of all, Dutch is the mother tongue of most of Flanders, having courses taught in English will reduce the quality of your education.

    Second, it gives an unfair advantage to English and USA native english speakers for research in academia. (Think of why diplomats use interpreters as to keep a level playing field)

    You’re going to carry the burden of investing and hosting education but favouring foreign students, and putting your native students in the second place. Ofcourse your country is going to go downwards on the international rankings while UK and USA going up..

    A lot of people including me think that we are pretty good English speakers but don’t realise we’re terrible at it.

    So the ability to pursue higher education in your native language is a MUST imo.

    Back in the days, you went on Erasmus to learn a new language, now foreign students don’t even bother learning the language and demand the university to use English everywhere, this is absurd.

    But yeah if you say this you’ll get branded as a Flemish nationalist…

  18. Depends on what is meant with “working lanuage”.

    Casual conversations and work conversations on the floor definitely happen in Dutch/Flemish, that much I can attest here from our R&D department. We only really talk English with non-Dutch speaking colleagues and suppliers.

    But when it comes to terminology, programming and documentation of everything we do, that IS in English.

    But I also don’t see many people (as in: new hires) struggling with that. One assumes if you want to work for an international company, you’re already quite fluent in English. *shrugs*

  19. When I finished my master’s, I was talking to my promotor about the rules. I was enrolled in the Dutch master and I knew that by law, that meant at least 50% of my study point had to have been taught in Dutch. That obviously wasn’t the case seeing how all my courses had been in English. He replied “yes, but your thesis is in Dutch to compensate”. We had just finished going over my thesis together and my thesis was very much written in English. I asked “what the hell are you talking about? We just looked at it, it’s in English”. He just kept up this sardonic smile and said “I know, but officially, it’s in Dutch, just to get around the rules. No one is going to read it to check (ouch, but true) anyway, so don’t worry about it”.

    So yeah, please get rid of the dumb rules.

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