Who studies in English will work in English?

The language of instruction in CEGEP continues to make headlines as Quebec prepares to adopt Bill 96, which aims to modernize the Charter of the French language. A provision that will require English-speaking students to take three French courses at the college level, in particular, is far from achieving consensus.

The Liberals, representatives of the Anglophone community and Aboriginal leaders denounced its “discriminatory” nature and called for its outright abolition. The Parti Québécois, teachers’ unions and French-language advocacy groups argue that post-secondary education in English is an important source of assimilation. It is therefore imperative, according to them, to extend to CEGEP the same rules as to primary and secondary, namely the obligation for non-English speakers to do their college studies in French.

The Coalition Avenir Québec advocates instead a freeze on places in English-language colleges for 10 years. Premier François Legault recently justified this position by recalling that the demographic weight of the English-speaking community is approximately 9%, while English-language CEGEPs represent 17% of college places.

A study by Statistics Canada, published in April, sheds some light on this often emotional debate: the probability of working in English after having studied in this language at CEGEP is high, especially if the student is not an English speaker. An allophone graduate is seven times more likely (46%) to work primarily in English if they obtained their last degree from an Anglophone rather than a Francophone postsecondary institution (7%). Among Francophones, nearly a quarter (23%) work in English after studying in that language, compared to 4% for those who took the same educational path in French.

“We can speak of a strong link, quantitatively speaking, between the language chosen for post-secondary studies and the language of work afterwards,” summarizes Étienne Lemyre, analyst at Statistics Canada’s Center for Demography.

The researcher acknowledges that his study has some gray areas on the language course of students, gaps that will be partly filled during the analysis of data from the 2021 census, which includes questions on the language of instruction primary and secondary. But remains that thecurrent study, based on the cross-referencing of data from the 2016 census and the System ofhe information on post-secondary students (PSIS) from Statistics Canada, offers an interesting basis for reflection.

The researcher focused primarily on the language of work of graduates from Canadian post-secondary institutions in minority settings, namely English-speaking institutions in Quebec and French-speaking institutions in the rest of Canada. For Quebec alone, the sample amounts to nearly 325,000 people: 240,000 of French mother tongue, 35,000 of English language and 50,000 of third language, whose trajectory it followed from 2010 to 2015.

More than a third of allophones who graduated during this period had opted for postsecondary studies in English (33%) or for a bilingual path (5%). Among Francophones, only 5% earned their last degree in English. As for Anglophones, 6% had opted for a bilingual post-secondary course and 11% for French.

Alain Bélanger, full professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and president of the committee for monitoring the linguistic situation in Quebec of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), led some ten years, a study on a smaller scale on the reasons that led Montreal CEGEP students to choose an education in English. Main motivation: the desire to perfect their command of the English language in order to promote their professional career. A significant proportion of allophones also justified their decision by invoking a greater mastery of English than of French.

A decade later, faced with the results of Étienne Lemyre’s study, he is sorry that English retains a very strong “attractive power” over French-speaking and allophone students.

« Lemyre’s results corroborate those of the survey we conducted about ten years ago: attending an English-speaking CEGEP leads to the use of English in all spheres of activity, including social life and work. “, estimates Alain Bélanger, who is also president of the Association of the demographers of Quebec.

It should be noted that among the students who attend English CEGEPs, 35% have English as their mother tongue, 25% French and 40% another language.

Unsurprisingly, Statistics Canada’s analysis confirms that the Montreal and Gatineau regions are the places in Quebec where graduates are most likely to use the language of Shakespeare at work.

Other indicators also come into play: the nature of the diploma (college students are more likely to work in French than university students), the type of job (self-employed workers use English more than employees) and the industry (science, engineering, computer science and mathematics graduates use more English at work than their peers who studied health, arts, humanities, business or education).

The Statistics Canada study has its limits, however, believes Marie-Odile Magnan, sociologist and professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Montreal. Because the 2016 census data does not include primary and secondary languages ​​of instruction, much of students’ linguistic backgrounds remain in the shadows, she said.

The language spoken at home, the linguistic mix, the primary and secondary schools attended, the country of birth and that of the parents, etc. : all of this must be taken into account before saying that studying in English at CEGEP or university will lead to a language transfer, assures the holder of the Chair in Ethnic Relations at UdeM. “You have to consider the complete trajectory of an individual to see if there are no other variables that would explain a preference for English, because it is a very complex phenomenon. »

Since it only takes into account the last diploma obtained, the analysis also says nothing about young people who opt for French in CEGEP and then for English in university, or vice versa. “Students move a lot between CEGEP and university and can cross language barriers,” recalls Marie-Odile Magnan.

The use of the mother tongue as a basic indicator, rather than the language in common use, is also debated among demographers and sociolinguists. Researchers such as Jean-Pierre Corbeil have pointed out in particular that this choice has the effect of confining first and second generation immigrants to the category of allophones, even if they use French in everyday life, and of masking their successful integration into French-speaking society.

The release of data from the 2021 census on mother tongue, language spoken at home and knowledge of official languages, next August, then those on language of work, in November, will provide an even better portrait loyal to the situation. It will then be possible to compare the language used and the language spoken at home before and after post-secondary studies, explains Étienne Lemyre. It will also be possible to measure more precisely the importance of the link between the language of work and the language spoken at home. “For the moment, we do not know the magnitude of this link, or even if it exists”, underlines the analyst.

Start of response (and resumption of the debate) in the fall!