Abstract:

There is a strong worldwide trend for higher education policymakers and university management to heavily invest in their national higher education institutions with a view to enhancing their global competitiveness.

National governments are keen on promoting rigorous competitive selection procedure for universities to further them higher in the global university raking league tables. The academic excellence stakeholders in their quest for reaching world-class education are shifting from entrepreneurial to research –focused activities.

A quick glance through web sites reveals that various national and regional academic excellence initiatives are kept on track, including Project 985 in China, Global 30 scheme in Japan, Brain Korea 21 in South Korea, the EU Education and Training 2020 programme (ET2020), a European higher education area strategy, USA national centers of academic excellence in various areas, project 5-100 in the Russian Federation, etc.

The above initiatives envisage that higher education is developing as a global phenomenon, along with English gaining strategic leverage on education policies and strengthening its presence within education environment as a major medium of Instruction.
The research problem statement rests on the evidence that Academia is confronting challenges, while cutting its way to progress on the above path.

The research hypothesis argues that the academic excellence initiatives require a wider and much more comprehensive actions that go beyond academic English skills training with respect to the faculty and students whose native language is not English. The relevant activities should cover the issues of reaching international standards of multilingual communication in most-in-demand social settings, including governance and public administration, research implementation and guidance, cooperation between Academia and Industry, documentation drafting and processing, etc.

The research methodology applies the qualitative analysis and stands on the comparative analysis of national universities action plans with a view to identifying the essence and components of supportive language-in-education policies.

The research materials have integrated national universities’ official reports on academic excellence initiatives annual data with regard to foreign language issues, educational stakeholders’ surveys regarding the use of foreign language in national higher education systems.

The empirical research findings and their discussion provide grounds for drafting preliminary conclusions regarding the importance of multilingual dimensions for the nation's higher education system to tackle potential social inequality and divide, to foster the national identity, to enhance the nation's political and economic sustainable development within globalization landscape.

Keywords:

Multilingual education, academic excellence.