Arabic +\- Middle Eastern Studies

[Delphigirl]

Hi does anyone know anything about undergraduate Arabic/MES? My daughter (currently Y12/L6) is thinking about this for uni. She is doing Spanish Geog and economics at A level but also an Arabic club (3hrs/week) so she can read and is learning to write and speak Modern Standard Arabic for beginners level. She loves it.

So I would love to know anything about various uni departments at the moment. She doesn’t want to be in zlondon so SOAS is out. She doesn’t think she wants oxbridge. She has been to Edinburgh and St Andrews for a look and liked both, she is going to look at Exeter and maybe Manchester, also McGill in Canada.
She wants to get a high level of language acquisition, not keen on much literature analysis, likes the social science aspects of MES, not really interested in Islam as a religion. She would like the possibility of a choice of dialects, and perhaps of some Farsi teaching on the side. She has 8s and 9s at gcse and will get predicted all As and Astars. What are the best departments currently, and why?
Thanks

Well that’s an unexpected update, @Delphigirl! But when a vocation calls, it calls - and how fantastic that she is now doing what she really wants. Best of luck to her.

My DD also did something unexpected, rejecting all her UK offers for Arabic+ (Manchester ended up being the favourite, for Arabic + French, after a fantastic open day experience) and opting for an undergraduate degree in France. So she’s learning Arabic in a French-medium environment (Sciences Po, Menton campus), one month in, and loving it so far. NB the bachelors’ course there is much broader than would be the case here, so she’s in fact doing Politics, Economics + Constitutional Law with a minor in Arabic & Middle Eastern Studies. Some is taught in English and some in French, depending on a number of things including the number of international students in the particular class. It is not for the faint of heart, with many hours of contact time timetabled anywhere from 8am-9pm, six days a week. But that is what floats her boat, and she always was a Francophile.

Has Arabic survived the cull at Edinburgh, does anyone know?

That's a tremendous update @marisquita! Course sounds fantastic and Menton.... sigh. What a lucky girl. I hope it continues to go well for her.

I was wondering about the humanities cull at E'Burgh and whether Arabic would survive - but they have been teaching it there for 100s of years, it would be an act of enormous vandalism to cull it. Anybody know?

Really interesting updates @Delphigirl and @Marisquita. It really is lovely to hear both your DD's are thriving in their respective environments. I love a good pivot when it works out for the best!

I've had my head out of HE for so long that I haven't really wanted to advise this family in any particular way at all, especially given the negative emphasis on languages and as this thread has shown, DC are so individual in their needs and interests. Each institution really does seem to have its own idea of a ME programme of study looks like; DD would now feedback that her programme was somewhat misleading on what level Arabic would be gained at the end; most in her small cohort dropped it in Y4, with varying exposures in their YAs. But she gained a far deeper understanding of the ME region through the history/political modules (and also of South America) which played positively into her interests. She has resigned herself to accessing workplace language suites if she wants to further develop the Arabic, but it did provide a point of difference in the recruitment process. Conversely with the Spanish, her language of innate strength, she couldn't even complete her UG with a first in any of the final exams, so high was the bar setting set the same for those studying single, JH or business JH programmes. Not an outcome she would have foreseen, but ultimately logical when those as an example, studying JH Business and Spanish had received 20+ hours a week on Spanish alone.

Thank you again!

As far as I know it’s ok at the moment.

Great updates!

DD1 in 4th year now doing Arabic and Politics . But the strikes are affecting classes a lot - this is the 2nd week and most of her classes are affected. She is busying herself with dissertation and any classes that are still running. The libraries are no go areas too unless you want to walk through the picket line, which she didn’t want to last week and ended up going to the library in the city centre.

Is @ExeterWilliam still around? Wondering how safe it is for DS to still apply to Exeter. His options are pretty slim for Arabic and German as it is.

I am and we are very much still around, and I should say that in spite of the considerable headwinds, I would expect most of the major UK departments in Arabic and Middle East Studies will continue to operate well into the future. Exeter will in fact relaunch our core degree as a BA in Arabic, Islamic and Middle East Studies from autumn 2027, while also continuing with combined degrees with Modern Languages or Politics.