Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T22:09:21.785Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Parker’s Piece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

P.M. Larby*
Affiliation:
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London
Get access

Extract

The government cuts of the early 1980s have dealt harshly with Oriental and African area and language studies in Britain’s univerisites. Between 1981 and 1985 London University's School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), the major world institution in these fields, lost 37% of its budget and 25% of its teaching staff - those from its Department of Africa’s language teaching establishment dropped from thirty to nine. The continent of Africa boasts more than 1,000 languages: SOAS can now offer teaching in only nine. In other universities staff losses in African studies number some fifty posts of which only fourteen have been replaced. African studies in general have been reduced from inter-disciplinary programmes of area studies to a subordinate status within subject disciplines.

Type
African Studies and Research
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)