The courses offered in English are multiplying at HEC Montréal. The oldest university management school in Canada, a real French-language establishment since 1907, claims to meet the demand for training in English, which is becoming the “language of business”.
Half a dozen new programs in English, created in 2018, 2019 and 2021, are attracting a growing clientele at HEC Montréal, reveals data obtained by The duty under the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies.
The management school affiliated with the Université de Montréal offers 14 programs in English, including its flagship program, the MBA, offered in the language of Shakespeare for more than two decades. This program is also offered in French.
“It’s important for our graduates to be fluent in English. It’s the language of business,” explains François Bellavance, director of studies at HEC Montréal.
The French-speaking establishment attracted in 2022 a record number of 497 students in programs in English. That’s seven times more than at the turn of the millennium, in 2000, when the fledgling English-language MBA program had 70 students.
However, the offer of courses and programs in English remains marginal. Some 3.8% of the 13,240 students at HEC Montréal are enrolled in programs in English. This does not include undergraduate or doctoral students taking certain courses in English or Spanish as part of French courses.
A global “market”
Competition is global in the “market” of management schools, explains the director of studies at HEC Montréal. “Students can go to the University of British Columbia, to Toronto, to the United States or wherever,” he says.
Institutions must adapt their offer according to demand. And the demand for English courses is growing in a globalized economy. Even in France, the business schools as they say over there, switch to English.
“We want our diploma to be recognized worldwide”, sums up François Bellavance. He specifies that HEC Montréal does not intend to massively increase the offer of courses in English. The establishment remains resolutely French-speaking.
anglicization vector
Independent researcher Frédéric Lacroix believes that higher education is one of the main vectors of anglicization in Quebec. He deplores the fact that a French-language establishment like HEC Montreal must increase its offer of courses in English to compete with its English-speaking rivals.
“The language of final studies has a huge impact on the language of work”, says the author of Why Law 101 is a failurepublished in 2020, which won the President of the National Assembly prize for political essay of the year.
The researcher notes that the deregulation of tuition fees for foreign students, decreed in 2018 by the previous Liberal government, encourages universities to recruit more internationally. Foreign students pay off big: tuition fees for short programs at HEC Montréal are $11,400 for students from elsewhere, compared to $2,300 for Quebecers.
The MBA in English costs foreign students $60,000. About 40% of those registered there come from abroad, says HEC Montreal. Three out of ten students in this graduate program in English are already permanent residents; the rest have Canadian citizenship. This MBA in English is offered face-to-face in Montreal, at the new downtown HEC Montreal campus, starting in the fall of 2023.
Statistics Canada has shown in 2021 that half of foreign students become permanent residents, recalls Frédéric Lacroix. These so-called “international” students are not required to learn French during their studies.
To subsequently grant permanent residence, Quebec requires “knowledge of French, but not the use of French”, recalls the researcher. He believes that foreign students should not have access to permanent residence in Quebec if they are unable to “use” French in their everyday life.
popular programs
To counter anglicization, HEC Montréal says it has designed a tailor-made program to pave the way for foreign students: the “MBA plus” offers a summer school and an internship in French to English-speaking students to allow them to integrate into the Quebec.
The number of students has increased in most courses offered in English at HEC Montréal, except the oldest and most important, the MBA, whose progress has been slowed down by the pandemic, in 2020. The MBA in English has already reached 178 students in 2002, but dropped to 40 in 2022.
The number of students enrolled in the master’s degree in international logistics, created in 2012, has multiplied by almost 10 in a decade, going from 11 to 100 students.
Four specialized higher education diplomas (DESS) in management have also been created over the years to meet specific needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Algeria and Kuwait. Each of these English programs attracts between 14 and 51 students each year. Classes are given in each of these countries by Montreal professors sent abroad or by teachers recruited in these states.
A dozen students have also enrolled in the “master’s” (in English) in international artistic management each year since the program was created in 2013.