Comparative academic performance analysis of business administration freshmen using english vs. spanish as medium of instruction

Abstract

This research explores the impact of language on academic performance and determine whether there are significative differences in the grades obtained by the students using English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and those that use Spanish (non-EMI), their mother tongue, in all the ten (core) courses of their freshman year. The courses syllabus for both types of programmes is the same and there is a strong coordination among the teaching staff ensuring that courses plans and learning achievements are similar despite the language of instruction. The initial data set consisted of the cohorts of students who first enrolled in the Bachelor Degree in Business Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in years 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12. Therefore the students that did all their freshman year courses in English were paired, and their results compared with those obtained by their partners on the non-EMI group using multivariate techniques. The authors hypothesize that there are no differences in the students' performance between the EMI and non-EMI group, so that the academic output for students from one group and the other should be statistically similar. However, the obtained results show that those differences exist.