When universities speak only one language
We have lost count of how many times we have heard this from students: “Ma’am, I understand it—but I can’t explain it well in English.” We often treat this as a language problem. It is not. It is a structural problem—one that sits at the core of Philippine higher education.
A recent discussion paper asks a deceptively simple question: do our universities actually speak the multilingual realities of the Philippines? The answer, drawn from both data from over 5,000 students/faculty and lived experiences, reveals a troubling paradox. We are producing graduates who are globally legible—but locally insecure. That phrase is not just clever wording. It captures a system that, in its pursuit of global competitiveness, is quietly drifting away from the communities it is meant to serve.
Inside classrooms, multilingualism is already the norm. Faculty explain complex concepts by shifting between English and Filipino. Students process ideas in their mother tongue before expressing them in English.
Regional languages emerge in moments of clarification, emphasis, or connection. Participation increases when familiar languages are used and understanding deepens when students are allowed to think in the language they know best. This is not failure. It is pedagogy responding to reality.
But the system changes the moment students are evaluated. Examinations, written outputs, and especially licensure tests revert to rigid English. There is no flexibility, no negotiation. Students are taught in one linguistic reality and assessed in another. The result is a quiet but powerful form of gatekeeping.
Students are not only being tested on what they know; they are being tested on how well they can apply their knowledge in English. When they fail, we attribute it to individual deficiency, rarely to systemic misalignment.
The system penalizes this lag incompetence. Rural schools with scarce English exposure face the highest failure rates, not because their students are less capable, but because assessment rewards privilege, not potential.
This is not a neutral arrangement. English proficiency in the Philippines is unevenly distributed, shaped by access to quality schooling, geography and socioeconomic background. In rural schools, where teachers often struggle with English fluency themselves, and students hear the language only during formal exams, performance gaps are most severe.
A rural learner may correctly solve a math problem in their head but cannot translate the solution into a grammatically correct English sentence on paper. National assessments consistently show rural students scoring far below urban peers—not because they lack reasoning skills, but because they lack months of English exposure that urban or city schools provide through media and tutoring.
Their answers are marked wrong, not for faulty logic but for faulty grammar. Students from more privileged contexts arrive at university already fluent in the language of assessment. Others arrive equally capable but linguistically disadvantaged. Yet both are judged using the same standards.
Over time, this produces a subtle but damaging internalization: that one is less intelligent simply because one cannot express ideas in English. As the study notes, students can feel intelligent in one language and inadequate in another. That is not a language issue. That is an issue of equity and dignity.
The deeper problem is ideological. In Philippine higher education, English has become shorthand for quality. We assume that research written in English is more rigorous, that lectures delivered in English are more academic, and that students who speak fluent English are more competent. But language is not the same as knowledge.
This conflation distorts how we evaluate learning and scholarship. With Philippine monolingual journals having only 57 published articles per year and six publications per journal per year, this shows how works produced in Filipino and other Philippine languages are marginalized, not because they lack merit, but because they do not conform to the dominant linguistic standard.
Our languages possess inherent intellectualism, as linguists affirm. Yet, its intellectualization remains incomplete in "controlling domains" like medicine, law, and science, where textbooks and laws stay English-dominant. Over time, this produces a form of epistemic injustice, where entire ways of knowing are sidelined simply because they are expressed differently.
The push for internationalization has only reinforced this pattern. Universities pursue global rankings, partnerships and visibility, often anchored on English-medium instruction. There is nothing inherently wrong with engaging globally.
But when internationalization becomes synonymous with English-only thinking, it narrows our understanding of what it means to be competitive. As the paper suggests, universities risk becoming globally legible but locally detached. That detachment is not abstract. It appears when graduates struggle to communicate with local communities, when research fails to resonate with local realities, and when education becomes more about external validation than national development.
What makes this situation particularly frustrating is that the system already knows what works. Faculty overwhelmingly support multilingual approaches. Students report better understanding and participation when local languages are used. Stakeholders find services more accessible when communication is multilingual.
Even industry partners demand multilingual hires, yet our system still produces English-only graduates. In practice, the system is already multilingual. But institutionally, it refuses to recognize it. Multilingualism is tolerated in classrooms but not legitimized in policy. It exists, but only in the margins.
If reform is to be meaningful, it cannot stop at rhetorical commitments. Multilingual pedagogy must be formally recognized as a legitimate approach to teaching and learning.
The misalignment between multilingual instruction and monolingual assessment must be addressed, especially in high-stakes contexts like licensure examinations. There must be deliberate investment in intellectualizing Filipino and regional languages as languages of scholarship, supported by journals, translation infrastructure, and academic incentives. Most importantly, we must rethink what we mean by quality. If quality continues to be measured primarily through English proficiency, then we are not measuring learning—we are measuring access.
The Philippines is a multilingual nation with over 185 local languages. That is not a weakness to be corrected but a reality to be embraced and a resource to be leveraged. The cognitive architecture built through strong first-language instruction does not impede second-language learning. It accelerates it.
Yet our universities, and increasingly our basic education system, continue to operate as if one language is enough. When higher education speaks only in English, it risks silencing the very voices it is meant to educate and empower. And when that happens, the problem is no longer linguistic. It becomes national.
---
Heidi B Macahilig ([email protected]) is a professor at the College of Advanced Studies (CAS) and the current director of the Educational Policy Research and Development Office (EPRDO). Nikolee Marie A Serafico-Reyes ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences and EPRDO. Arlyne C Marasigan ([email protected]) is a professor at CAS and EPRDO. Allen A Espinosa ([email protected]) is a professor at CAS and EPRDO. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Philippine Normal University.
- Latest
