Assessing English Medium Instruction Policy in Internationalization
of Indonesian Higher Education
Possibility and Reality
Anggia Utami Dewi and Lia Maulia Indrayani
Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia
Keywords: English Medium Instruction, Policy, Indonesia, Higher Education, Internationalization.
Abstract: One policy taken in internationalization of higher education in non-English speaking countries is the use of
English as medium of instruction. The goal of building World-Class University is believed to be hand-in-
hand with the presence of internationalized programs including its curriculum, courses, instructors and
students. In Indonesia, even though there has been the conduct of international classes in universities for
several years, the specific policy of English Medium Instruction (EMI) is absence. The current strategy of
internationalization seems to focus on the advancement and intensification of research and publication.
Through a qualitative approach of methodology, this paper discusses the policy of English Medium
Instruction in internationalization of Indonesian higher education. The assessment will be on the debate
between possibility and reality of the policy implementation, in the context of internationalization strategy.
In the end, this paper summarizes whether the EMI policy derives more benefits or shortfalls for the
internationalization of Indonesian higher education.
1 INTRODUCTION
The force of globalization and the transition towards
knowledge-based economy have changed the nature
of higher education and its institutions. Universities
are now expected to be world-class, which constitute
to the presence of international programs, curricula,
researches, publications, and university’s body.
Internationalization has taken and is still taking
place as the major effort to achieve the goal of
making World-Class University (Knight, 2004).
Although there are various strategies of
internationalization initiatives, the use of English as
medium instruction (henceforward EMI) has widely
used as one policy taken by non-English speaking
countries to boost up the number of international
students also the widespread of reasearch and
publication readership (Coleman, 2006; Wilkinson,
2013; Hu and Lei, 2014). According to Kirkpatrick
(2011), almost all East Asian and South East Asian
countries even have promoted the use of English as
educational language from primary and secondary
education, even at tertiary level. At university level,
Asian universities followed their European
counterparts, implement the EMI policy as their
internationalization strategy for several reasons,
including to attract international students; to prepare
domestic students for global labour market; and to
raise the institutions’ profile (Doiz, Lasagabaster,
and Sierra, 2011).
In the case of Indonesia, as one of the key
players in South East Asia, even the
internationalization efforts have been actively
pursued by the universities, the specific EMI policy
is absence. The conduct of international class to
increase the presence of international body in
university has not been dominance, since the main
strategy of internationalization is still focusing on
the advancement and intensification of research and
publication.
This paper discusses an early assessment of the
EMI policy in internationalization of Indonesian
higher education with qualitative approach of
method. By first reviewing the policy and practices
of EMI in other countries, this paper shall elaborate
the debate between possibility and reality of the
policy implementation, in the context of
internationalization strategy of Indonesian higher
education.
Dewi, A. and Indrayani, L.
Assessing English Medium Instruction Policy in Internationalization of Indonesian Higher Education - Possibility and Reality.
DOI: 10.5220/0007168804410445
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 441-445
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
441

2 RESEARCH METHODS AND
ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
The qualitative approach method used in this study
is literature review and assessment from the policy
documents related to the topic. This method is used
as a preliminary step to broaden and deepen the
understanding of the internationalization of
Indonesian higher education, especially the English
Medium Instruction (EMI) Policy. The data mainly
gathered from the websites and policy documents of
Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher
Education, as well the selected reputable universities
in Indonesia.
As for analytical framework, the main concept
utilizes in this study is internationalization. Here,
internationalization refers to what Knight (2004)
stated as “process of integrating an international,
intercultural or global dimension into purpose,
functions or delivery of post-secondary education”.
For internationalization strategy, this study refers to
the previous study from Shin and Kehm (2013) that
examine the strategies of building world-class
university –where internationalization counts as
crucial element- by the characteristic of national
higher education system; the use of English as
instructional language; and the context of economic
development and internationalization of their
academics.
This paper will focus in assessing the aspect of
“use of English as instructional language” with the
English as Medium Instruction (EMI) Policy, in the
internationalization of Indonesian higher education.
3 ENGLISH MEDIUM
INSTRUCTION: POLICY AND
PRACTICES
The aspiration of being international, has been
dominating almost all higher education institutions
in the world. Where according to Ritzen as cited in
(Doiz, Lasagabaster, and Sierra, 2011), in order to
be considered as international, university has to
recruit international students from diverse cultures
and nationalities. This discourse of
internationalization and globalization on higher
education then always closely relate to the extension
of use and influence of English globally.
Nowadays, many countries where English is
counted as the foreign language or not the first
language, have taken the EMI policy as one way to
internationalize their higher education institutions.
In this sense, EMI policy refers to the policy of the
teaching of a subject using the medium of the
English, where English is not the national language
and the aims of the teaching is not learning the
language (Madhavan and McDonald, 2014).
In Europe, the expansion of EMI started after the
Bologna Process which is the framework agreed by
universities across Europe on standardization of
offered degrees. As one of the aims of this process is
to increase the student mobility between European
universities, also to make European universities
more attractive, the fact leads to the vast adoption of
English as medium of instruction (Kirkpatrick,
2014). The “success” level of practices of EMI
policy in European universities are also varied
depend on the sociolinguistic feature of use of
English from one country to another (Doiz,
Lasagabaster, and Sierra, 2011).
As for Asian countries, several leading higher
education providers such as Japan, Hong Kong,
Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and recently
China have included the EMI policy in their
internationalization efforts. In the case of Hong
Kong, there is very little small of negative remarks
on the insistence of EMI, as both in institutional and
national level, the stakeholders believe that it will
help achieving the target to rise the international
ranking of Hong Kong universities also the target of
being education hub (Kirkpatrick, 2014).
In Japan and South Korea, the government has
driven grand strategy to enhance the competitive
strength of their higher education. The government
of Japan, in 2012 declared the Global 30 Project
which aimed to attract 300.000 international students
to study in Japan in its thirty best universities that
offer various courses that conducted in English also
degree programs in English. While in South Korea,
the recruitment of international student is of the
major implementation strategies of
internationalization of Korean higher education.
This strategy and other strategies are delivered
through programs that linked each other.
The Study Korea Project was first introduced in
2004 as the main program for the international
students’ recruitment (Ahn, 2010). The first goal
was to attract 50.000 international students by 2010.
However, comparatively successful than the Japan
case of Global 30, there was an unexpected high
increase of international students in Korea by around
49.720 in 2007. The South Korean government then
set new goal of the Study Korea Project to attract up
to 100,000 international students by 2012, followed
by the most recent target which is 200.000
international students by 2020.
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
442

Furthermore, the other compelling EMI policy in
South Korea took place with the establishment of
Graduate School of International Studies in several
top-notch universities in South Korea, where almost
all courses are fully conducted in English. The
government, realizing the importance of the EMI
policy, even “force” the implementation of the
policy by funding the financial support to
universities offering EMI, even further connect their
evaluation for research project funding to the EMI
proportion within all courses offered by university,
to encourage the universities to offer EMI courses
(Byun, et al., 2011).
Kirkpatrick (2014) mentioned in his study of
other cases of the implementation of EMI in
Malaysia, Philippines and China, where the trend of
importing “foreign universities” by opening the
campus branches, also existed. However, regardless
of the general feature of the intensification of use of
English, strategy of internationalization also could
be approached depend on the features of one
country’s higher education system, economic
development and internationalized academics.
4 ASSESSING ENGLISH
MEDIUM INSTRUCTION
POLICY IN
INTERNATIONALIZATION OF
INDONESIAN HIGHER
EDUCATION
According to the research from Shin and Kehm
(2013), the national level grouping of
institutionalization or world-class university system
within a country can be mainly assessed through two
aspects: a) the developed and developing system of
higher education, b) the uses English as the main
language in their teaching and research activities.
Based on the classification, for countries belong to
the non-English speaking developing category, the
challenges of internationalization are mainly on the
establishment or research-based higher education
and the adoption of English as the main academic
language (Shin and Kehm, 2013).
Therefore, these non-English speaking
developing countries are usually adopting several
policies to overcome the challenges. The policies
include special funding projects to boost research
productivity, uses of English in research and
teaching, also inviting English-speaking foreign
professors came from English-speaking countries,
and give huge incentives for indexed international
publication in reputable journal with high impact
factor (Shin and Kehm, 2013).
Indonesia, as the other Asian counterparts, is also
currently playing an active movement towards the
internationalization of its higher education. The
specific target of building World-Class Universities
in Indonesia is for the top universities to enter the
top 500 of world university ranking. In order to
achieve the goal, the government draw several
attentions on internationalization efforts, which are
the importance of international cooperation
management, including the establishment of
international office in universities; the socialization
on internationalization; also, the encouragement of
international programs.
The current approach of internationalization in
Indonesia cannot be separated from the major
restructuration of higher education management that
remarked by the transfer and merger of the
Directorate General of Higher Education from
Ministry of Education and Culture to the Ministry of
Research and Technology in 2015. Under the current
Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher
Education (Kemenristekdikti), universities are
expected to be the main engine of research and
innovation that will increase the country’s
competitiveness index. The main impact of this
grand policy is the intensification of research and
publication, due to the current assessment of
international publication and citation level of
Indonesian academics which is still low compared to
other South East Asian countries.
The Indonesian government put the urgency to
increase the number of reputable international
publication in Indonesia to 30.000 by 2019. To
achieve this, universities’ lecturers and researchers
are obligated to productively conduct research and
publish their work in reputable journals. For
research, the government and universities provide a
quite huge funding in the form of competitive
research grants. As for publications, government and
the institutions also currently implement the merit
and performance-based incentives and rewards. A
more open system of universities’ managerial is also
applied with the implementation of selected
universities legal enterprise status that give them
more autonomy.
Based on the current assessment of
internationalization approach of Indonesian higher
education, regardless of the emergence of
international class programs, also the development
of joint-degree, double degree, student exchange,
and other similar programs in Indonesian
Assessing English Medium Instruction Policy in Internationalization of Indonesian Higher Education - Possibility and Reality
443

universities, the specific EMI policy is not in
presence. The government, has not yet, put the
international student mass recruitment to the main
scope of internationalization efforts, and that is why
the EMI policy also still not being actively
exercised.
Unlike the results of study from Shin and Kehm
(2013) on the policies adopted by non-English
speaking developing countries, Indonesia only adopt
the special funding and grant for boosting research
also incentives for the English-publication. Means
the use of English still focuses in research and
publication, and not yet in the teaching process. For
invitation of English-speaking foreign professors to
the university, it is also not included in the grand
design of strategy, yet.
To further discuss the possibility and reality of
the EMI policy in Indonesia, it is important to note
that, here, the EMI policy is referring to the policy
that driven by the government initiative that
implemented by the higher education institutions.
Means, this paper does not focus on the institutional
level initiatives of the practices of EMI in courses or
program offered by the institutions itself.
On the positive side, looking at the success
stories of internationalization that implements the
EMI policy strategies, it is worth to note that the
Indonesian government can include this strategy to
complete the current approach taken. Especially,
based on the most recent indicator of national
ranking of Indonesian higher education institutions,
the percentage and number of international students
also the international accreditation are counted 28
percent under the institutional aspect (Ristekdikti,
2017). This is almost similarly important with the 30
percent of research and publication aspect. In this
respect, it is expected that in the upcoming years, the
consideration of EMI policy will gain more
attention.
However, there are also the opposite side of the
coin in regard of this EMI policy in Indonesia. On
the legal basis, as it is mentioned in the National Act
on Higher Education No. 12/ 2012, Article 37 point
1, Bahasa Indonesia as the national language is the
mandatory language for educational instruction, and
the use of foreign language is allowed. This relates
to the discourse of how the use of foreign language
for medium instruction courses is perceived as a
threat, mostly to the status of the first language.
The other important discussions are delivered by
Smith as cited in Coleman (2006, pp.6-7), that
despite the positive outcome, the pitfalls of EMI
policy could be predicted on several problems. Some
are: inadequate language skills and the need for
training of local staff and students; unwillingness of
local staff to teach in English; inadequate
proficiency of incoming international students in the
host language; problems in administrative and
organizational infrastructure; and much more.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Based on the early assessment, it can be concluded
that although in the future the EMI policy will
receive more attention in extension of Indonesian
higher education market, it is likely that now the
reality of using English as medium instruction still
facing more pitfalls.
The quality of higher education in general
remains the main homework to be finished. After
that, the quality of human resources that have global
competence also needs to be improved. By
achieving the current target of strategic plan from
the ministry, step by step, Indonesia can consider the
government approach to include the EMI policy to
the table. However, as Kirkpatrick (2011) suggested,
for Asian countries where English is not the native
language, the tertiary sector can implement bilingual
policies for teaching and publishing, without
endangering the national language and identity.
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