By Elliot Davis
In 2011, my colleague Juliane Iannarelli shared that in years past, the language of instruction at many business schools may have been taken for granted, but that in today’s global higher education and business environment, it has become a strategic dimension of program design and delivery.
In AACSB’s 2013-2014 Business School Questionnaire, 85.6 percent of 750 participating schools reported that the primary language of instruction at their institution was English. When excluding several English-speaking countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, that percentage drops considerably to 37.8 percent. However, 57.9 percent of these schools do offer instruction in a secondary language, and in 81 percent of the schools offering a second language, English is the language spoken.
It is clear that English is spoken widely at business schools around the world. If not used as the primary language for instruction, it is often spoken as a secondary language. But what of the leaders of these business schools? What languages do they speak, and do their languages align closely with the primary language of instruction at the business schools themselves?
The results of AACSB’s 2014-2015 Deans Survey are in, and AACSB staff have been taking a closer look at the overall profile of the business school dean in recent weeks. The 2014-2015 Deans Survey, conducted triennially with the cooperation and assistance of AACSB member institutions and their staff, received participation from 650 business school deans and interim deans, with 64 nationalities represented.
As could be expected based on the overall profile of the business schools themselves, the most common fluently spoken language of the responding deans was English, with 90.2 percent of deans reporting fluency. Interestingly, though, 48 percent of the responding deans did report speaking more than one language fluently.
Table 1. Number of Languages Spoken Fluently By Deans
|
Number of Languages |
Percent (n=357) |
|
One |
52.4% |
|
Two |
35.3% |
|
Three |
10.4% |
|
Four |
1.4% |
|
Five or more |
0.6% |
Source: AACSB 2014-2015 Deans Survey
The below visual shows a breakdown of the commonality of English fluency of business school deans.
You can access the display on its own page for ease of viewing by clicking here.
As evidenced by the world region breakdown provided on the display, English is spoken frequently in all regions. This result aligns closely with the usage of English as a primary or secondary language of instruction for the business schools themselves.
While English is certainly commonly spoken by business school deans, other languages that were identified as commonly spoken among the responding deans include French (8.7 percent), Spanish (7.7 percent), Hindi (5.3 percent), and Mandarin Chinese (5.0 percent).
If you found this data interesting and would like to learn more about business school deans or issues related to management education, you can follow along with BizEd’s special coverage of the AACSB 2015 Deans Conference currently unfolding in San Diego.
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