-Well, today we are no longer a Swedish university but a European and a global university. We recruit the best students no matter where in the world we find them, and therefore English is the natural language of education, says KTH principal Anders Flodström in Swedish State Television.
- On the whole this will put educators and students in a sort of semi-colonial situation. Living in a land that was never occupied, they will be forced to change to a language they do not fully master as soon as a foreign student or teacher sets foot there. I find it extremely unfortunate that this decision has been made, remarks Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary with the Svenska Akademien (Swedish Academy), guardians royal of the Swedish language and the institution that awards the annual Nobel Prize for literature.
Engdahl's rebuttal is part of an increasing domestic opposition to the almost self-obliterating national policy of cosmopolitism in Sweden. As late as last year centrist Alliansen put it to the vote in Riksdagen (parliament) that the Swedish language should be made an official language in Sweden, but lost to the leftist red-green government led by Göran Persson. Since the turn of the millennium Finnish, Tornefinnish, Romani Chib, Sapmi and Yiddisch are the sole official languages of the land. The majority language has never had official status.
The two most offensive factors surrounding the change of main tutorial language in what is Sweden's biggest technological university are:
1. The university is governement operated
2. The foreign students that are "recruited" pay nothing. The Swedish taxpayers pick up the whole tab, and to what end?
