English-taught programmes bring transparency to StudyPortals

For prospective international students, studying in English firmly remains the most popular choice. In response to this increasing demand, universities are raising the number of English-taught programmes (ETPs) that they offer in order to attract students from all over the world. This explains Studyportals’ strong focus on ETPs to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to higher education and support international students in making the best study choice.

What are universities offering?

Among the top 1,000 universities, students can choose among 72,500 full-degree study options taught in English. These institutions are located in over 700 cities and cover over 200 disciplines and sub-disciplines. As a result, the substantive offer of ETPs boosts internationalization and diversity in the classroom significantly. While the world’s top ETPs are most prevalent in English-speaking countries, there is an increasing number of study options available in central and Western Europe as well as Asia-Pacific.

The role of English in higher education

The increase of ETPs doesn’t come as a surprise, as it also conforms to the status of English in the global market. Not only is English the second-most prevalent language spoken (following Mandarin), it is also the official research language at universities and institutions worldwide. Moreover, as companies are continuing to seed their interests in a global context, many larger companies all over the world are shifting their working language to English, placing focus on an international audience. Therefore, from a career perspective, university graduates are encouraged to have high-quality English-speaking skills to be more competitive on the lucrative job market. The focus on adding transparency in English-taught study options abroad on our study search portals, complies with the changes in the global market, while also ensuring a continuity between a student’s education and the career outcome they can expect.

Students searching for English-taught studies abroad

From an online search point of view, users of the major search engines are more inclined to search in English, especially when seeking something as internationally-oriented as a study abroad. This search trend is also clearly visible on our portals, showing that the overwhelming majority of Studyportals users are interested in study programmes taught in English as it’s the most popular language filter.

Studyportals’ focus on ETPs

Our aim is to enable students to search for study options anywhere in the world and motivate them to pursue an international education. To provide transparency to students’ global options and acknowledging the role of the English language in our current world, we choose to focus on ETPs. This enables students to make better informed choices of their study options anywhere in the world. In other words, the focus on English-language course options brings an unprecedented level of transparency not only to higher education, but also to international education choice. By accurately reflecting and representing what international education demands, students are given a clear, transparent picture of the higher education industry as a whole. Our role is to gather all the critical resources students need so they can study abroad, making it much easier to browse and digest the vast amount of information and options. This also means, crucially, allowing users to easily search for and find our platforms on major search engines, since our main audience and domain is online. For this reason, our portals present a complete overview of all ETPs in the world, helping students to better compare higher education.

About Studyportals

Studyportals is the international study choice platform, enabling students to find and compare their study options across borders. With over 114,000 published courses from over 2,450 participating universities and over 19 million users in 2016, Studyportals is a leading information source for study seekers. Studyportals was founded from an international student organisation in 2009, and initially focused on the European education market. Since 2014 the organisation, headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has expanded its services, and is now also covering universities in the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. Its 165-person team includes 35 nationalities. For universities, Studyportals is a results-based channel for international student recruitment.