Hauptteil: Translingual Models versus Regulatory Enrollment Caps
Proponents of capping English-medium instruction (EMI) argue that unchecked institutional expansion accelerates domain loss, displacing Swiss national languages in advanced scholarship and public discourse. This apprehension aligns with critical analyses of globalised higher education, which demonstrate that uncritical Englishisation frequently marginalises regional linguistic traditions when pursued primarily for international prestige (Kirkpatrick, 2020). Furthermore, learner uptake of English-taught offerings is heavily propelled by instrumental employment considerations that risk deprioritising local linguistic competence if left completely unregulated (Zhang and Heng, 2022). Nevertheless, imposing rigid numerical quotas on English-medium curricula constitutes a restrictive measure that threatens the international mobility and research visibility of Swiss universities. Rather than treating English and national languages as mutually exclusive rivals, institutional governance can adopt models that foster additive multilingualism. Contemporary research underscores that reconceptualising EMI allows institutions to dismantle monolingual assumptions, promoting plurilingual instructional designs that integrate English alongside host languages (Dafouz and Smit, 2024). Consequently, embedding English within a balanced plurilingual ecology safeguards the vitality of Switzerland's national languages far more effectively than punitive enrollment caps.