European Integration Studies, Miskolc, Volume 2. Number 2. (2003) pp. 109-122
LSE EXPERIENCE∗
KRISZTINA MAJOROS, PHD Institute for Economic Theories, University of Miskolc 3515 Miskolc-Egyetemváros, Hungary [email protected]
Field of research: History of Economic Thought
Abstract: The London School of Economics and Political Science (known everywhere by its „LSE” acronym) is one of the world's leading social science institutions, where I had the chance to do research work this year. Awarded the Hungarian Eötvös Fellowship by the Hungarian Scholarship Board for four months to Great Britain I could spend a productive period of research at LSE and experience the ways of research and teaching joining to the Economic History Department. The aim of this study is to give impression about LSE, its special and unique environment that helped me undertaking a valuable research work, and showed me the feeling of being an LSE researcher.
Keywords: London School of Economics and Political Science, research and teaching at LSE, history of LSE, Economic History Department.
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a world class centre for its concentration of teaching and research across the full range of the social, political and economic sciences. Founded in 1895, LSE has an outstanding reputation for academic excellence. LSE is an unusual university in two respects. From the early days it emphasised graduate study, and today roughly half of its students are graduates. And students have always come from outside the UK: in the 1920s and 1930s 20-25 per cent, and now over 50 per cent. Students continue to travel from all over the world to come and study – now from over 130 countries. The teaching staff aims to reflect this diversity, with 40 per cent of staff coming from outside the UK plus around 100 academic visitors who come, each year, to work at the School. There are also many contacts with overseas organisations and academic institutions. Eminent scholars, world leaders and public figures come to lecture and debate or to attend seminars at LSE. The study of social, economic and political problems covers not only the UK and European Union, but also countries of every continent. From its foundation LSE has aimed to be a laboratory of the social sciences, a place where ideas are developed, analysed, evaluated and disseminated around the globe. Thirteen Nobel Prize winners in economics, literature and peace have been either LSE staff or alumni: George Bernard Shaw (1925), Ralph Bunche (1950), Bertrand Russell (1950), Philip Noel-Baker (1959), Sir John Hicks (1972), Friedrich von Hayek (1974), James Meade (1977), Arthur Lewis (1979), Merton Miller (1990), Ronald Coase (1991),
∗ Made by the support of Hungarian Eötvös Fellowship 110 Krisztina Majoros Amartya Sen (1998) – during my research work I had the chance to meet and interview him at Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Mundell (1999) and George Akerlof (2001).
The main entrance of LSE, the entrance of “Old Building”
LSE Experience 111 Location of the School
The School’s situation in central London, close to the centres of government, finance, the law and business is of obvious importance for its work. Its location in central London is central to its success. The following map shows the location of the campus.
The location of LSE in Central London
112 Krisztina Majoros However space has always been at a premium. The School opened modestly in rooms in the Adelphi in 1895 and since then it has sought to plant an ever-expanding footprint on the area. A closer view of the current buildings of campus can be seen on the following map:
Detailed map of LSE buildings
Teaching
LSE offers a unique opportunity to study the social sciences in a university institution with a worldwide academic reputation, while enjoying the cultural, social and recreational facilities of one of the world's great capital cities and a focal point in the increasing integration of Europe. The School teaches through 18 academic departments: Accounting and Finance; Anthropology; Economic History; Economics; Geography and Environment; Government; Industrial Relations; Information Systems; International History; International Relations; Law; Mathematics; Operational Research; Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method; Social Policy; Social Psychology; Sociology; Statistics. And five interdisciplinary institutes: LSE Experience 113 European Institute; Interdisciplinary Institute of Management; Language Centre; Media and Communications; Methodology Institute. At postgraduate level, the Graduate School offers a wide range of taught master's programmes (MA, MSc and LLM) normally of one academic or calendar year full-time study, or two years' part-time. Research programmes for MPhil or PhD degrees are offered by all departments and institutes. Programmes for LSE's own diploma qualification are also available either as conversion courses or to extend the depth or range of undergraduate studies. Language teaching is provided through the Language Centre, both as a degree option, and to learn or improve a language. LSE is responsible for the University of London's External Programme in economics, management, finance and social sciences. External students undertake study in their own countries, based on course structures and content set by LSE staff. Currently there are around 9,000 students studying in 136 countries. Some students go on to study programmes at LSE. Summer Schools provide an opportunity to experience life at LSE. The programme takes place in London between July and August, and in Bangkok in April. Courses are intensively taught over three weeks and examined to the standards of comparable LSE courses. Winter and Summer Schools are provided for young people in secondary education, along with a student shadowing scheme, as part of LSE's commitment to widening participation in higher education among young people who might not otherwise have considered studying for a university degree. The national Quality Assessment Agency (QAA) regularly inspects teaching quality across UK universities. Of those subject areas assessed at LSE since 1999 the following areas were approved – economics, mathematics (including the Statistics Department), philosophy, politics (covering the Departments of Government and International Relations, the Development Studies and European Institutes), psychology, management (with Industrial Relations). All achieved a score of 22 or above, regarded as excellent, with management awarded 24, the highest rating possible.
Research The School is a world centre for advanced research. In the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council, the School's research was rated second among around 200 universities and colleges. LSE came second after Cambridge for the quality of its research. LSE submitted 97 per cent of its staff for assessment, more than any other UK university. Below is a table of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise grades: comparison of LSE, Cambridge and Oxford. 5* is the highest grade possible in the RAE. Under Proportion of staff submitted, A means that at least 95% of the staff in the subject area had done enough research to be entered; B - means that less than 95% of the staff in the subject area had done enough research to be entered.
114 Krisztina Majoros Table 1. National Research Assessment (2001), comparison of LSE, Cambridge and Oxford
LSE Cambridge Oxford
Grade Number of Proportion Grade Number of Proportion Grade Number of Proportion staff of staff staff of staff staff of staff submitted submitted submitted submitted submitted submitted
Accounting and 5* 32 A n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a Finance Anthropology 5* 17 A 5 24 A 5 24 A
Business and 5 45 A 5 41 A 5 38 A Management
Economics and 5* 51 A 5 45 B 5 63 B Econometrics
Geography 5 25 A 5 44 A 4 36 A
History-Economic 5 17 A
5 81 A 5 131 A History - 5* 17 B International
Law 5* 43 A 5* 76 A 5* 80 B
Philosophy 5* 11 A 5* 39 A 5* 49 B
Politics and 5 76 A 4 18 A 5* 71 B International Studies
Social Policy 5* 43 A n/a n/a n/a 4 17 B and Administration
Sociology 5 39 A 5 22 A 5 13 B
Statistics and 4 15 B 5* 17 B 5* 12 B Operational Research
Total 5* grades 7 54% 4 40% 4 36%
Total 5 grades 5 38% 5 50% 5 46%
Total 4 grades 1 8% 1 10% 2 18%
LSE Experience 115 A further review in 2003 retrospectively introduced a higher grading of 5** for subject areas which had achieved 5* in the two previous rounds of research assessment. Economics and Social Policy received a 5**. In total LSE received 12 grades of 5**, 5* and 5 for all but one of its units of assessment. There are currently over 30 active research centres and units at the School, ranging from large multidisciplinary centres with substantial financial support to small centres with more modest resources. Most of LSE's research centres and units are financed by industry, commerce, research councils or charitable foundations. There are four centres funded mainly by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Others are funded through public or private partnerships; for example, funders for the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation include the ESRC, Deutsche Bank, Aon and BP. The interdisciplinary research centres at LSE are the followings: – Asia Research Centre – Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) – Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) – Centre for Civil Society (CCS) – Centre for Community Operational Research (SCORE) – Centre for Discrete and Applicable Mathematics (CDAM) – Centre for Economic Performance – Centre for the Economics of Education – Centre for Educational Research (CER) – Centre for International Studies – Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science – Centre for Research into Economics and Finance in Southern Africa (CREFSA) – Centre for the Study of Global Governance – Centre for the Study of Human Rights – Cities Programme – Computer Security Research Centre – Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) – The European Institute – Financial Markets Group (FMG) – LSE Gender Institute – Greater London Group – LSE Health and Social Care – LSE Housing – LSE London – Interdisciplinary Institute of Management – Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Justice – Media@lse – The Methodology Institute – Population Investigation Committee – LSE Public Policy Group – SAGE (Simulating Social Policy in an Ageing Society) 116 Krisztina Majoros – Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD)
LSE's new Research Lab is the base for more than 260 staff – one of the largest concentrations of applied economic, financial and social researchers anywhere in the world. The Lab is housed above the Library, and includes the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, Centre for Economic Performance, Financial Markets Group and the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines.
Maintaining the quality LSE seeks to maintain the standards of its teaching and research by reference to the highest possible national and international comparators. They do this in a number of ways: – Monitoring teaching practice: all proposals by departments for new postgraduate courses and programmes are reviewed by a central committee; the relationship between student and supervisor is shaped by School-wide Codes of Good Practice; courses and programmes undergo monitoring and review by departments; departments undergo regular review by the School. The School seeks to draw out from these processes ways not just of maintaining teaching quality but of improving it. – Student views count: students' views and experience are an important part of the process of maintaining teaching quality. The reviews include meetings to hear students' views. Each department has a staff/student committee. The Dean of Graduate Studies chairs a committee of research students and a committee of master's students to discuss School-wide issues affecting them. In addition, LSE uses confidential questionnaires to survey all students on their opinions and experience of teaching. – Independent examiners and advisers: as with all universities in Britain, experienced examiners from outside the School help set examinations for taught programmes, review results and decide on the award of degrees and diplomas. These examiners report to the School, and their comments and suggestions on examinations and course content and structure are taken very seriously. Similarly, external experts examine and report on theses for research degrees. – Quality controls by national bodies: the Quality Assurance Agency is responsible for quality assessments of taught programmes in every university, subject by subject. In teaching, the following aspects have been checked: curriculum design, content and organisation; teaching, learning and assessment; student progression and achievement; student support and guidance; learning resources; and quality management and enhancement.
Students and staff LSE has a cosmopolitan staff and student body, located within an urban, city centre campus. There are nearly 7,000 full-time students and around 750 part-time students at LSE. Of these about 38 per cent come from the UK, 18 per cent from other European Union countries and 44 per cent from more than 120 countries around the world. In 2001/2002 the top ten countries for non-EU students at LSE were: USA, Singapore, Hong LSE Experience 117 Kong, Canada, India, Malaysia, China, Japan, Norway, Cyprus. Non-EU students pay much higher tuition fee than the EU students. 48 per cent of the students are women and 52 per cent are postgraduates. LSE has over 1,300 full-time members of staff – 97 per cent of the academic staff are actively engaged in research, and 44 per cent are from countries other than the UK, half of these from European Union states, the remaining half from other nations around the world. The School maintains close links with government, industry and the professions (many of which are situated close by in the city of London), through public meetings and seminar programmes concerned with the dissemination of research findings in the context of public policy. Many staff are also actively engaged in policy development through membership of advisory bodies such as the Urban Task Force, Monetary Policy Committee, Low Pay Commission and the Press Complaints Commission. The School has more than 62,000 registered alumni. Around 28 past or present heads of state have studied at LSE, and 30 members of the House of Commons and 34 members of the House of Lords have either studied or taught at LSE.
The Library The Library of the School is the largest in the world devoted exclusively to the social sciences. Founded a year after the School in 1986, it is also known as the British Library of Political and Economic Science and provides a specialist national and international research collection. The Library today is truly a 21st century resource. Unusually for an academic library, all materials are housed in a single site – the Lionel Robbins Building, named after the prestigious economist who studied, taught and was a governor of LSE. In 2001 architects Foster and Partners redeveloped the Lionel Robbins Building, which houses the Library, into a modern, energy efficient and visually stunning space.
LSE Library inside 118 Krisztina Majoros The Library collects social sciences material on a worldwide basis, in all major European languages. Holdings are particularly rich in economics, statistics, political science and public administration. The extensive collections range from a European Documentation Centre to 90,000 historical pamphlets, with over 95 per cent of Library stock available on open access. 50 kilometres of shelving – enough to stretch the length of the Channel Tunnel! – accommodate over four million printed items including 31,000 past and present journal titles. The Library subscribes to approximately 3,000 e-journals, as part of its electronic information provision. As well as the Main Collection, the Library has a separate Course Collection (multiple copies of key reading list texts for LSE students) and several special collections – as the Governmental Collections and Statistics or the Archives and Rare Books. The Library's Archives collections offer unique primary source material of outstanding value for research into British political, economic and social history, social anthropology (mainly post-1890) and the history of philosophy. It also contains the archives of LSE which is useful for research into the development of disciplines such as economics and philosophy. The Library has some of the longest opening hours of any university library in Britain. A high-speed network interconnects all the School's computers, providing access to a wide range of software, as well as advanced research and teaching software. Through the network, electronic mail, remote log-in facilities and file transfers are available to all UK and most European and North American universities, and many others throughout the world. Access is provided to a wide range of databases and information sources, through CD-ROM, online databases and other routes. In the Library itself there are 1,600 study places of which 490 have networked PCs and 226 offer laptop drop–in points.
Brief History of Economics at LSE
The London School of Economics and Political Science was set up in 1895 by Sidney J. Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb. The aim of establishing LSE was to contribute to the improvement of society, by promoting the study of its problems and the training of those who were to translate policy into action. In 1900, LSE became one of the colleges of the University of London system. The quixotic philosopher Bertrand Russell gave his considerable inheritance to help fund the LSE. Despite being founded by Fabian socialists, its early appointments were more conservative: W. A. S. Hewins (later a Tory MP) was its first director, the outspoken and staunchly neoclassical economist, Edwin Cannan, was to head the economics department, the technocratic Arthur L. Bowley headed statistics and liberal theorists L. T. Hobhouse headed sociology. However, the Fabian roots of the school were well-represented in the appointments of more radical scholars such as Graham Wallas, R. H. Tawney, Lord Beveridge, Harold Laski and Hugh Dalton. The LSE from the very beginning aimed at being an academic teaching–and– research powerhouse. It was one of the group of “new universities” (like MIT, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, etc.) founded at the turn of century which eschewed the Oxbridge-Ivy League “gentlemanly education” approach in favour of a more serious academic and LSE Experience 119 technical approach, akin to the Central European model. Like other “new universities”, the LSE was keen on raising its profile via academic research. They shocked the old Oxbridge system by creating departments that were hitherto unheard of, like anthropology (under Malinowski) and sociology (under Hobhouse), and by splitting economics into separate “pure economics” and “economic history” components. In arriviste fashion, the LSE encouraged the formation of professional associations and journals – in economics alone, the LSE brought forth Economica in 1921, the Economic History Review in 1927, and the Review of Economic Studies in 1933. Edwin Cannan served from 1895 to 1926, after which Allyn A.Young took over. Young, however, died rather suddenly in 1929 and was succeeded by the thirty-year old Lionel Robbins, a young economist much influenced by the work of Philip H. Wicksteed and the Austrian School of Economics. The remarkable Robbins saw LSE as an instrument by which to break the orthodox Marshallian hold over English economics. Under Robbins, continental economic theory (Walrasian, Austrian and Swedish) began to finally infiltrate the Anglo–Saxon world. Robbins himself announced the arrival of this “new” economics in his famous Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) expounding the methodology of radical neoclassical theory. The Robbins years were glory years for the LSE. It produced a remarkable group of economists, notably John Hicks, Paul Sweezy, Roy G. D. Allen, Abba Lerner, Nicholas Kaldor, George Shackle, Ursula (Webb) Hicks and Tibor Scitovsky in the 1930s, all of whom went on to stretch and change economic theory in a significant manner. One of their notable efforts was the resurrection of Paretian general equilibrium theory and the forging of the “New Welfare Economics” in this period. Much of this new activity was channelled into the Review of Economic Studies, a publication founded and run by LSE graduate students. One of Robbins' more daring moves was to bring the Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek to the LSE in 1932 as the LSE's answer to Cambridge's young star, John Maynard Keynes. Hayek and Keynes locked horns over the theory of macrofluctuations in the early 1930s, and their rivalry placed the LSE clearly on the map. However, the Keynesian Revolution did much to entice many of the younger members of LSE away from the Robbins–Hayek sphere of influence. The fault for this “disloyalty” lay in good part with the intransigence of their elders: the deserting students, notably Kaldor, Lerner and Shackle, had made numerous attempts to forge the LSE approach with the Keynesian, but Robbins and Hayek refused to entertain such a merger. Be that as it may, the LSE heritage of these younger economists remained quite visible, even in their subsequent “Keynesian” work. In later years, the LSE continued to travel in its distinct path – albeit it gradually arranged a modus vivendi with the Neo–Keynesian orthodoxy. Nonetheless, a “Continental” flavour maintained itself throughout, as we see in the work of later LSE economists such as Harry G. Johnson, Michio Morishima, Frank H. Hahn, Helen Makower, Hla Myint, W. Arthur Lewis, Peter Bauer and Ronald H. Coase. The London School of Economics has a long and distinguished tradition of research ant teaching in economic history. The first Director of the School was an economic historian and he and two founders of the School, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, insisted that 120 Krisztina Majoros economic history should be taught from the outset. Britain’s first full–time university teacher in the subject, Lillian Knowles, was appointed at LSE in 1904 and many famous scholars have since taught in the Department of Economic History, among them T. S. Ashton, Eileen Power and R. H. Tawney. Following in this tradition, the Department of Economic History today is committed to both a strong research record and to research–led teaching.
The Economic History Department
Research Researchers in the LSE Department of Economic History are committed to the use of concepts and theories from the social sciences in studying the history and development of real economies and understanding them in their social, political an cultural context. The Department is home to by far the largest group of researchers in economic history in the UK and probably the world. The varied academic backgrounds and international diversity of its faculty, academic visitors and research students mean that its interests range from the medieval period to the current century, form Latin America to China via Africa an Europe, form questions about the institutions of economic change to ones on technology and finance, and from the history of economic ideas and policy to the measurement of fast human well-being and explanations for global trade patterns. The research community of the Department consists not only of faculty but is enriched by a number of post docs, by research staff attached to major (grant–aided) research projects, by visiting research academics attached to the department and by a large group of PhD students. This community supports research seminars and workshops within the department and encourages all members of the group to contribute to international conferences and workshops in their field. All the faculty are active researchers and contribute in the normal academic way by writing research monographs and publishing journal articles. More unusually, perhaps, for economic historians, the fruits of their research have also been used by international agencies, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, by government departments and by local communities. The faculty also include amongst their research commitment the editorship of both The Economic History Review and The Journal of African History and they have recently been instrumental in setting up a new journal: The Journal of Global History. Project work, joint research work and autonomous work all enhance the depth and scope of the department’s research, and endorse its continued commitment to the collaboration between history and the social sciences. Research facilities at the LSE and in the immediate area are excellent. We have already mentioned the British Library of Political and Economic Science (Library of LSE), but other major resources are provided by The British Library, the British Technological Library, the Institute of Historical Research and the University of London Library, all within 15 minutes walk.
LSE Experience 121 Research–Led Teaching The department considers its primary output to be research and research training, in both of which it has been most successful. The Department was awarded a 5 – as we could see in Table 1. – in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. (This was the first in which it was assessed as a history unit, rather than a specialist unit in economic history). Before that, it was the only economic history department to be awarded the top grade in all prior research an teaching quality assessment exercises. It is the only history department in London to hold the recognition of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for its Master’s training course which enables successful student to go onto PhD research; and students admitted to the department under such a training scheme gained an exceptional 7 ESRC studentships in last year’s application round. This research success is closely related to the teaching programmes of the department in various ways. Research training: The department’s PhD programme is the largest provider of research training in economic history in the country. There are currently around 30 students registered on PhD in the Department. Entrants must either have completed a recognised MSc in economic history, or a related discipline, and in their first year as a research student, they continue with further course work training (as required) and begin substantial research work. At the end of the first year, students have a major review of their research proposal, research design and early research work. Most of their students finish their PhDs within about 4 years. They go on to a number of different jobs; many research students trained in the department are now employed at institutions all over the world in teaching and research posts. The department regards PhD students as a very important and integrated component of the research activity of the department. All faculty are involved in research supervision and the Department runs its own programme of weekly PhD research workshops and occasional one day conferences or workshops in which PhD students are closely involved. In addition, there are two regular research seminars in economic history and one in business history within the school, and a number of related seminars at the Institute of Historical Research (situated 15 minutes walk away) which host several seminars each evening for the University of London history faculties. Graduate teaching – the MSc: The department offers three taught master’s programmes, two taught within the department: MSc in Economic History and MSc in Global History; and one jointly with the Economics Department: MSc in Economics & Economic History. This year the total number of students registered on these courses was 78. These programmes are 1 year programmes, in which students take the equivalent of 3 full courses and undertake a dissertation in the field. Each programme has some of its own core or dedicated teaching, and each programme also offers the faculty the opportunity for graduate teaching based on individual research interests. With such a sizable faculty, they are able to offer an interesting and varied range of research–led courses, a variety they find matched in their student body in terms of their disciplinary backgrounds and interests. It is perhaps a testament to the way their research feeds into teaching that the master’s programmes the Department are often used as the first stage of the training for a research degree and a number of students stay in the Economic History Department to obtain their doctorate. 122 Krisztina Majoros Undergraduate teaching: The department currently teaches four undergraduate degree programmes in which students can either study economic history alone, or combine it with the study of economics: BSc Economic History; BSc Economic History and Economics; and BSc Economic History with Economics. This year the total number of students in these programmes (including one year visiting students) was 138. Few students come to the department with any experience of economic history and each of these programmes allows students to progress from a basic knowledge acquired in the first year (via lectures and class work) to a third year programme of special options, taught in small seminar groups. As with graduate courses, each of these third year courses tend to be directly associated with individual faculty members’ research interests. And, unlike many degree programmes, the department expects all students, even in their first year, to work with professional–level academic research material (rather than textbooks). Thus, even at the undergraduate level, they are committed to research–led teaching. With a full-time teaching staff of 14 and the help of a group of part–time teachers, and with students drawn from every continent: the Department has a truly global identity, reflected in both their research and teaching programmes.
LSE experience is an experience of an academic institution based in London, and through its people, facilities and ideas it is the experience of openness and possibilities for research or any other academic activity.
Acknowledgements I am grateful for the Hungarian Scholarship Board who awarded me the Eötvös Fellowship for four months to London. My deepest thanks go to the whole faculty of the Economic History Department at LSE, especially to Professor Mary Morgan for her hospitality and valuable help at the department.