EMI-cum-acceleration policy in the contemporary transnational HE market

Abstract

Abstract Conceptualizing EMI-cum-acceleration policy in a transnational HE market as the regulation and institutionalization of language practices through a chronometrical approach to time for the sake of global economic competition and social mobility, this qualitative case study explores the experiences and enactments of such a policy by six engineering students at Manar University (a pseudonym) in Saudi Arabia. The data were gathered from analysis of policy documents, individual interviews, and a group interview. The findings reveal that the ways in which each student negotiates, resists, and desires such a policy suggest that an individual has some temporal resources and autonomy to make sense of “the acceleration experience” within the broader “structural forces of acceleration” (Vostal, 2016, p. 117) created at the university. It was also found that students are positioned in a double-bind-between the capitalist logic of accumulation and competition (speed), and the democratic value of equity in the EMI program.