English-language education in the bachelor’s programme in psychology is nonsense
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Alarm bells are ringing everywhere about the abolition of English-language bachelor’s programmes in psychology. But there is no need for all the fuss, because abolition is logical, according to psychologist Iris Breetvelt.
The alarm bells are now ringing everywhere, including in Folia, about the switch back to Dutch as the language of instruction in the bachelor’s programmes in psychology, as a bargaining chip in the deal between UNL and the Minister of Education, Culture and Science on the Foreign Language Education Test (the so-called Tao). Han van der Maas, Merel Kindt and Ingmar Visser, among others, have already spoken out on this issue. In the debate on the language of instruction, both supporters and opponents of English-language education put forward three arguments: the labour market, the quality of education and international research. But what are the facts?
Job prospects
How effective is English-language bachelor’s education in psychology, which apparently attracts a massive influx of foreign students, for the labour market? From an employer’s perspective, this is obvious: the larger the labour pool, the greater the competition, which allows for rigorous selection and lower employment conditions. From the perspective of graduates, the importance is complementary: the labour market should not be oversupplied if they are to find suitable jobs with reasonable employment conditions. Poorer job prospects translate into lower salaries (in Dutch).
From the perspective of society, a mismatch in the labour market is unfavourable; this applies both to a severe shortage of workers, which leaves jobs unfilled, and to a surplus of labour potential that is underutilised or even leads to unemployment. The justification for English-language education and the associated influx of foreign students is therefore, according to the International Balance Act (the so-called Wib), further elaborated in the language test: an exceptionally large shortage in the Dutch labour market. This is not the case for the psychology programme.
Job search duration
According to the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA, Maastricht University), the ITKP (indicator of future bottlenecks in personnel provision) for the Bachelor’s programme in Psychology is 1.28. This means that there are no future bottlenecks in personnel provision. The labour market is not an appropriate criterion for the effectiveness of bachelor’s programmes, because the master’s programme that follows is decisive for entry into the labour market. For the master’s programme in psychology, the ROA shows an indicator of 1.08: virtually no bottlenecks in personnel provision. The indicator for the future labour market situation for the master’s programme is 1.06: moderate future labour market position. The unemployment rate is 5 per cent, which is high. According to research institute SEO, the job search period for psychologists in 2023 was approximately six months before the first substantial job was found.
Connection between study and work
The connection between study and work is diverse in psychology, due to the different master's programmes and partly complicated by the intervention of postgraduate programmes. The latter concerns access to BIG-registered professions for psychologists who want to work in mental health care: mental health psychologist, clinical (neuro)psychologist, psychotherapist. There are considerably more applicants than places available for the postgraduate programmes that qualify for these professions in healthcare (as advised by the capacity organisation). Psychologists compete with orthopedagogists and health scientists for places in these postgraduate professional training programmes.
According to the Nivel healthcare research institute, there is a ‘backlog’ of candidates who are eligible for postgraduate training as mental health psychologists on the basis of their curriculum, (in Dutch). There is therefore a postgraduate bottleneck that makes it difficult for psychology graduates to qualify for work in mental healthcare. The shortage of personnel in mental health care therefore does not concern graduate psychologists, but BIG-registered psychologists.
In short, proponents of internationalising psychology programmes with English as the language of instruction do not provide convincing evidence of a shortage of psychologists or a favourable labour market position for graduate psychologists. They do not go beyond anecdotal claims about positions and organisations in which psychologists are said to be employed. Furthermore, they hide behind the premise that academic programmes are intended to provide scientific training and are not vocational training.
Labour market studies do not provide any argument for maintaining the current massive influx into psychology programmes. In a competitive labour market, a high retention rate of foreign psychologists trained here logically leads to the displacement of Dutch psychologists, which raises questions about the cost-effectiveness of education and possible recourse to social security.
Quality of education
Both teachers and students must have a good command of English if the teaching and learning process is not to suffer from inadequate language comprehension and expression skills. “Choosing English as the language of instruction is choosing second-rate language tools for the education of academics,” says emeritus professor of language psychology Annette de Groot in the Dutch magazine Levende Talen. Factors such as a smaller vocabulary, less efficient language processing due to the greater mental effort required when using English as a second language, and accent all play a role. An analysis of thirty English-language lectures by the same number of Dutch-speaking lecturers in various subjects showed that a lack of fluency, accuracy and clarity could impair comprehensibility, according to the PhD-research of Klazien Tilstra. Grammatical complexity, lexical variety and structural markers were underused by the lecturers. The Dutch-speaking lecturers lacked the language skills essential for comprehensibility in English.
The results of studies into the effect of English as a second language and language of instruction on subject-specific study performance are not clear-cut; some (quasi)experimental studies show no effect of first versus second language as language of instruction on study performance, but other studies do show a negative effect on study performance when instruction is provided in a second language. Dutch and German psychology students were compared in terms of their academic performance in Dutch-language versus English-language education. This revealed a difference in the average grade achieved, but not in the number of credits obtained; students who followed their own language as the language of instruction performed better than both groups who had followed education in English as a second language.
There are insufficient grounds for assuming that the educational process of Dutch students is not adversely affected by English as the language of instruction. The top talent of teachers is unlikely to be able to compensate for this sufficiently.
International science
The argument that international cooperation, communication and publication in science mainly take place in English now applies to all scientific disciplines, but this does not justify teaching bachelor’s programmes in English. For this reason, English-language psychology programmes can only be justified for research master’s programmes, provided that additional training guarantees a sufficient level of academic English proficiency.
Iris Breetvelt is a psychologist, former researcher at the Kohnstamm Institute and former member of the Central Works Council of the UvA.
