ABSTRACT
We attempt to simplify a complex situation by suggesting that policy-making and management take place at four levels: the supranational, the national, the institutional, and the classroom. We hope that this four-level distinction will provide us with a framework to understand how English-medium higher education (EMHE) language policy works, doesn’t work, and might work. At each level, we aim to examine the interests or agendas of the policy-makers or managers, the problems that they might be trying to solve, and the types of decisions that they make. We aim to give examples of how this has played out in different global contexts. It would be impossible to give a full description of the vast range of EMHE policy-making initiatives (or very often lack of them) at all levels. Our aim is, rather, to offer a checklist of questions that might be of help to policy-makers, managers, and practitioners of EMHE in thinking through policy and practice in their own contexts.
