By Sean Coughlan, BBC News education correspondent
16 May 2012 Last updated at 09:49 GMT
Milan is crowded with Italian icons, which makes
it even more of a cultural earthquake that one of Italy's
leading universities — the Politecnico di Milano — is
going to switch to the English language. The university
has announced that from 2014 most of its degree courses
— including all its graduate courses — will be taught and
assessed entirely in English rather than Italian.
The waters of globalisation are rising around higher
education — and the university believes that if it remains
Italian-speaking it risks isolation and will be unable to
compete as an international institution. “We strongly believe
our classes should be international classes — and the only
way to have international classes is to use the English
language”, says the university’s rector, Giovanni Azzone.
COUGHLAN, S. Disponível em: www.bbc.co.uk. Acesso em: 31 jul. 2012.
As línguas têm um papel importante na comunicação entre pessoas de diferentes culturas. Diante do movimento de internacionalização no ensino superior, a universidade Politecnico di Milano decidiu