The impact of the language of instruction: How economics students in the Netherlands evaluate an English-taught Undergraduate Programme

Abstract

In this article student ratings of undergraduate level Economics courses are analysed on the basis of the aggregated results of end-of-term questionnaires. Two groups of students were involved, one of which was taught in Dutch and the other in English. In the analysis the influence was investigated of students’ assessments of both their own and their lecturers’ language proficiency, and of the didactic skills of the lecturers. Various differences between the judgements of the two groups were found; moreover, in course of time, some of the judgements evolved. The multivariate analysis shows that as students’ judgements of the didactic skills of their lecturers rose, so did the course ratings in general. Surprisingly, the judgements of neither the students’ own linguistic proficieny, nor that of the lecturers proved to be significant.