As a global phenomenon, EMI has a strong presence in Bangladesh. Although it is available at all levels of education, higher education has become its main adopter. The origin of EMI is associated with British colonial rule which sought to educate the natives in English in the interest of colonial domination. This colonial legacy has subsequently been reshaped by the forces of globalization, which has established English as a global lingua franca. More critically, EMI has served as a tool for neoliberalization of higher education with all its anticipated and unanticipated consequences. Our aim in this chapter is to provide a critical overview of EMI in Bangladeshi higher education with reference to policy and policy motivations. We also outline policy implementation processes and educational and social outcomes of EMI.

The emerging English-using global polity has responded to these global and neoliberal developments by introducing and investing in English. EMI has been one of the key policy strategies for many nations. To some extent, it has come to redefine nationalism as it demanded policy accommodation even in nations with a strong sense of nationalism demonstrated by national languages. For these nations, internationalization of higher education has become a key goal, which essentially means opening the sector to global challenges and opportunities. Internationalization has played out in different ways for different nations. If it has allowed more developed nations to attract international students and staff to their higher education thus giving them a share of the competitive international education market, for less developed nations it has at least helped to reduce the outbound flow of students to more developed and English-prominent nations (Hamid et al. 2013b). As a global academic lingua franca, English has been the obvious choice in this process of internationalization (Bowles and Murphy 2020).

The latest national education policy (Ministry of Education 2010: 24) states that ‘English will remain as a medium of instruction in higher education along with Bangla’. It applies only to public sector higher education. Although this is a clear statement of the medium for teaching and learning, there are no further details on how the two languages will be used in the sector. In the absence of clarity – or regardless of what the macro-level policy says – it is important to consider the policy as practised by the forty-six universities constituting the public sector. The policy in practice appears to be more complex, as different institutions have different priorities, resources and constraints. Nevertheless, certain broad patterns can be identified. For example, specialist universities such as science, technology, engineering and medicine rely on English, as books and other resources are mainly available in English. General or comprehensive universities do not reflect uniformity in terms of medium of instruction (MOI) as arts, humanities and social sciences are taught mainly in Bangla while sciences and other specialist fields prefer English. Based on our experience of teaching and interacting with colleagues, it can be safely asserted that flexibility in language use is the norm.

The second entry point for EMI to higher education is more recent showing the influence of globalization and neoliberalism. As previously noted, MOI in the public sector shows some balance between English and Bangla reflecting the emphasis on nationalism and national identity on the one hand and exploiting the benefits of the global language on the other. However, the MOI in the private sector universities is heavily swayed towards utilitarian motivations rather than nationalist ideologies (Hamid and Baldauf 2014). It is on nationalist grounds that the University Grants Commission has recently imposed two compulsory courses on Bangla and the history of Bangladesh on all students in these universities.

Private universities are relatively recent entities which were first established in the early 1990s by the introduction of the Private University Act, 1992. So far there are 105 such universities, the majority of them located in Dhaka and other urban settings. Although there is no discussion of language or medium of instruction in the act, each university has adopted EMI by default. This is interesting because setting up a private university is a micro-level initiative by individual actors with interest, resources and entrepreneurship (Zhao 2011). However, since each university from its micro context has adopted the same language policy, EMI reflects what is called the ‘macroization’ of micro policy (Hamid and Baldauf 2014).

The neoliberal origin of private universities needs to be emphasized. First, they have privatized higher education, which had existed only in the public sector. They operate following corporate models to ensure quality, efficiency and accountability and compete with one another for market share of fee-paying students. These universities have also accomplished economization of education showing an alignment between the curriculum and job market demands. Consequently, each university curriculum focuses heavily on business, sciences and engineering fields with negligible presence of arts and humanities (Anwaruddin 2013). The rationale for opening these universities was also dominated by neoliberal arguments. Although the private sector was allowed to step in to compensate for the limited capacity of the public sector in meeting the growing demand for higher education, privatization was ultimately another choice for those who could afford higher education. Private universities sought to minimize the outbound flow of Bangladeshi students to foreign countries for higher education. EMI served as a key strategy in this process by fulfilling two purposes. It helped to introduce internationalization of higher education in the local context for prospective students to consider before they went abroad. It also provided a corrective to public sector failure in developing students’ English-language proficiency demanded by the job market.

While EMI in the public sector seems to be regulated on nationalist grounds, its largely deregulated utilization in the private sector does not reflect such ideologies. As previously noted, Bangla has been imposed as a mandatory course on students only recently. The utilitarian approach to English and EMI adopted by private universities reflects postnational and neoliberal tendencies. The EMI actors of private universities are identifiable individuals. The vast majority of them are successful businesspeople whose desire for establishing universities may reflect the global direction of entrepreneurship and investment. If these actors are not people with power in a modern sense (Zhao and Baldauf 2012), they seek power and dominance by utilizing their capital and entrepreneurial desire in relation to education.

Since the individual actors who initiated the private university enterprises adopted the same language policy (i.e. EMI), it can be argued that they share the same neoliberal habitus and agency, at least in terms of language and language ideologies. As per this habitus, EMI is a default option for private universities. English is perceived to be central to the enterprise and its academic and organizational functioning. Other languages such as Bangla may have only an informal or peripheral role, if we ignore the recent imposition of the Bangla-language course.

The first characteristic of the practice of EMI is the accommodation of the two main languages, Bangla and English, and the linguistic hierarchy constituted by them. Bangla is dominant in public universities while it is English that dominates private universities. By extension, if English is the other language in the public sector, Bangla has been given this role in private universities. However, while English as an academic lingua franca has a functional and instrumental role in public universities, Bangla seems to have a ne...