London School of Economics

cj · June 25, 2005, 5:16pm

<ol>
<li>Hatingtonyblair = Basbasics</li>
<li>In the US, LSE is not on par with “Oxbridge” in terms of “name reputation.” Namedropping alumni doesnt change that.</li>
<li>I don’t believe I am qualified to make any generalizations about Michigan v. LSU. Of course, the majority of you are not qualified either but it obviously isn’t stopping you.</li>
</ol>

mgarthwaite · June 25, 2005, 5:49pm

There are two type of people, those that have heard of Oxbridge (who has not?)

Those that know that there are more than two universities in the UK.

I certainly would not want to work for any organisation that had heard of Oxbridge and not the University of London, which LSE is a member of.

Being a post grad at LSE I an qualified to talk about my University.

cj · June 25, 2005, 6:14pm

Let me tell you why you arent qualified.

You have only made two posts on this forum, both of which mysteriously held the purpose of supplementing one of hatingtonyblair’s outbursts. Your registration date shows that you registered DURING an on going argument started by hatingontonyblair.

The logical conclusion is that either
a) you are hatingtonyblair or
b) you are one of his chums, here to add validity to his flimsy claims and arguments. You are “the cavalry”, so to speak.

Either way, that stuff may fly at ‘The Student Room’ but it sure doesnt hold up here.

Hatingtonyblair · June 27, 2005, 7:13pm

CJ: whoever you are, you should stop this. You are making personal attacks on individuals who are trying to contribute to a discussion. Just stop it.

Hatingtonyblair · June 27, 2005, 7:14pm

Mgarthwaite. Keep it going. Do not let these people bully you.

Hatingtonyblair · June 27, 2005, 7:20pm

Cj says:3. 'I don’t believe I am qualified to make any generalizations about Michigan v. LSU. '

Cj this definitely applies to your comments about LSE: they are unqualified generalisations.

Hatingtonyblair · June 28, 2005, 9:33pm

Extract from an interesting piece here from one of the UK’s major daily newspapers, the Guardian, London, Monday June 27 about LSE’s influence on public events, with reference to government plans to introduce ID cards in the UK:

'A time-honoured tradition

Once again the political clout of the London School of Economics is being felt by the government, this time over plans for the introduction of national ID cards. Donald MacLeod reports

Monday June 27, 2005

It is unlikely that anyone will believe the government’s cost estimates for its pet ID card scheme after today’s devastating report from the London School of Economics (LSE).
Just 24 hours ahead of a crucial Commons vote on the proposed ID card scheme, a panel of 14 professors at the LSE highlighted 10 potential pitfalls and concluded that the current scheme was “neither safe nor appropriate”, and will cost double, triple or even quadruple the government’s estimates…

.Once again the political clout of the school, which seems to be closely wired into parliament, Whitehall and the Bank of England, is being felt by ministers. No matter how loudly they protest, politicians and the public are going to believe, based on the school’s track record of research, the LSE’s £19bn figure rather than the government’s own £6bn.

The strength of the LSE is that it is close to the political process: the present director Sir Howard Davies moved there from running the Bank of England and his place was taken by former LSE professor Mervyn King. The chairman of the Commons education committee, Barry Sheerman, sits on its board of governors, along with Labour peer Lord (Frank) Judd. Also on the board are Tory MPs Virginia Bottomley and Richard Shepherd, not to mention Lord Saatchi and Lady Howe.

The LSE is associated in the public imagination with 1960s student radicalism but has in fact produced a string of right-wing notables including Margaret Thatcher’s heroes V A Hayek and Alan Walters.

The school has always seen itself as more hands-on than Oxford or Cambridge and gloried in its cramped urban setting, once labelled “the finest academic ant-heap in the kingdom”…
But the school tries not to be too close to politicians - and has never been tied to one allegiance. Even under its former director Anthony Giddens, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Tony Blair and gave theoretical backing to the concept of “the third way”, the school’s academics have continued to unearth facts and figures that ministers might find unhelpful…'

prepster05 · June 28, 2005, 11:24pm

I have always equated LSE with the University of Chicago. I dont know why. I have the idea of a strikingly intellectual place with a huge name in academia and very talented students. Thats just my 2 cents.

eighteenforluck · June 28, 2005, 11:34pm

I always thought LSE was the British Wharton equivalent…

prepster05 · June 28, 2005, 11:51pm

Hold on, everybody. In the same way the the University of Chicago has fundamentally influenced scholarship the world over for the past centruy, so has LSE. If you think of universities in terms of how much of an effect they have had on the world stage in academia and scholarship, there is a short list of universities that have had tremendous impact in academia in the last centuries. These include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Stanford, and Berkeley.

Michigan is a great school, but it does not come close to having the same weight in academic circles as the above listed universities. Maybe the average person on the street might equate the two universities, but among academicians, LSE is the clear winner.

This comes from a person with absolutely no bias either way. Although I will say that many of the Michigan graduates and students that I have met are very smug and tend to overestimate the prestige of their alma mater.

harri · June 29, 2005, 12:48am

Prepare for a prompt response from Alexandre.

Ivy_Grad · June 29, 2005, 1:05am

harri, you beat me to that…

grabs popcorn and eagerly awaits Alexandre’s response to the anti-Michigan “heresy”

Alexandre · June 29, 2005, 2:53am

Thank you Harri…I will take it from here! LOL You know me too well dude!

Ivy_Grad, you crafty devil you! Sit back, eat your popcorn and enjoy! LOL

Prepster, you are correct in most ways, but you exaggerate on three fronts:

1) Columbia and LSE (and Michigan for that matter) are not at the same level as H,P,Y,S,M, Cal, Cambridge and Oxford when it comes to reputation in academic circles. They aren’t far behind mind you, but they aren’t quite there.

2) Although Michigan does not carry the same weight as H,P,Y,S,M, Cal, Cambridge and Oxford (and I have always admitted that), it isn’t as big a step down as you claim. Michigan belongs in the group of universities right below them, as do Chicago, Columbia, Cornell and 30 or so other universities aroun the World…including LSE. And that’s not according to me, it is precisely according to academe. The USNWR Peer assessment score is the collective opionion of the US academic world and according to them, Michigan is at the same level as the schools you claim are better than it. Here are some peer assessment scores:

UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION:
CalTech: 4.7/5.0
Chicago: 4.6/5.0
Columbia: 4.7/5.0
Cornell: 4.6/5.0
Duke: 4.6/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 4.6/5.0
Michigan: 4.6/5.0
Penn: 4.6/5.0

I would say that in academic circles, all of those schools above are pretty equal. Cal, H,M,P,S and Y all get scores of 4.8+, so they are in a league of their own if you ask me.

If you look at how those universities do in more specialized academic circles, you will see that Michigan does in fact belong in that group.

BUSINESS:
Penn: 4.65/5.0
Chicago: 4.45/5.0
Michigan: 4.35/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Duke: 4.2/5.0
Cornell: 4.1/5.0
CalTech and Johns Hopkins do not have B-schools.

EDUCATION:
Columbia: 4.5/5.0
Michigan: 4.3/5.0
Penn: 4.1/5.0
Cornell: 4.0/5.0
CalTech, Chicago, Duke and Johns Hopkins do not have schools of Education.

ENGINEERING:
CalTech: 4.7/5.0
Michigan: 4.35/5.0
Cornell: 4.15/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.85/5.0
Columbia: 3.7/5.0
Duke: 3.65/5.0
Penn: 3.6/5.0
Chicago does not have a college of Engineering.

LAW:
Chicago: 4.65/5.0
Columbia: 4.65/5.0
Michigan: 4.55/5.0
Penn: 4.35/5.0
Duke: 4.3/5.0
Cornell: 4.25/5.0
CalTech and Johns Hopkins do not have Law Schools.

MEDICINE:
Johns Hopkins: 4.85/5.0
Duke: 4.65/5.0
Michigan: 4.5/5.0
Penn: 4.5/5.0
Columbia: 4.35/5.0
Cornell: 4.15/5.0
Chicago: 4.1/5.0
CalTech does not have a medical school.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS:
Michigan: 3.9/5.0
Duke: 3.8/5.0
Chicago: 3.7/5.0
Columbia: 3.6/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.5/5.0
Cornell: 3.3/5.0
CalTech and Penn do not have Public Affairs programs.

BIOLOGY:
CalTech: 4.7/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 4.7/5.0
Duke: 4.4/5.0
Columbia: 4.3/5.0
Cornell: 4.3/5.0
Michigan: 4.3/5.0
Chicago: 4.2/5.0
Penn: 4.1/5.0

CHEMISTRY:
CalTech: 4.9/5.0
Columbia: 4.4/5.0
Cornell: 4.4.5.0
Chicago: 4.1/5.0
Penn: 4.0/5.0
Michigan: 3.9/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.7/5.0
Duke: 3.3/5.0

COMPUTER SCIENCE:
Cornell: 4.5/5.0
CalTech: 4.1/5.0
Michigan: 3.9/5.0
Penn: 3.8/5.0
Columbia: 3.7/5.0
Duke: 3.7/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.3/5.0
Chicago: 3.2/5.0

GEOLOGY:
CalTech: 4.9/5.0
Columbia: 4.3/5.0
Michigan: 4.3/5.0
Chicago: 4.0/5.0
Cornell: 3.9/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.9/5.0
Duke and Penn are not rated.

MATHEMATICS:
Chicago: 4.8/5.0
CalTech: 4.6/5.0
Michigan: 4.6/5.0
Cornell: 4.4/5.0
Columbia: 4.3/5.0
Penn: 4.1/5.0
Duke: 3.9/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.8/5.0

PHYSICS:
CalTech: 5.0/5.0
Chicago: 4.6/5.0
Cornell: 4.6/5.0
Columbia: 4.3/5.0
Michigan: 4.1/4.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.9/5.0
Penn: 3.9/5.0
Duke: 3.4/5.0

ECONOMICS:
Chicago: 5.0/5.0
Penn: 4.5/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Michigan: 4.2/5.0
CalTech: 4.0/5.0
Cornell: 4.0/5.0
Duke: 3.7/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.6/5.0

ENGLISH:
Chicago: 4.7/5.0
Cornell: 4.7/5.0
Columbia: 4.6/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 4.6/5.0
Penn: 4.5/5.0
Duke: 4.4/5.0
Michigan: 4.4/5.0
CalTech is not rated.

HISTORY:
Chicago, 4.7/5.0
Columbia: 4.6/5.0
Michigan: 4.6/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 4.5/5.0
Cornell: 4.4/5.0
Penn: 4.3/5.0
Duke: 4.1/5.0
CalTech is not rated.

POLITICAL SCIENCE:
Michigan: 4.8/5.0
Chicago: 4.3/5.0
Duke: 4.3/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Cornell: 3.8/5.0
Penn: 3.2/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.0/5.0
CalTech is not rated.

PSYCHOLOGY:
Michigan: 4.6/5.0
Columbia: 4.0/5.0
Cornell: 4.0/5.0
Penn: 4.0/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.9/4.0
Chicago: 3.8/5.0
Duke: 3.8/5.0
CalTech is not rated.

SOCIOLOGY:
Michigan: 4.7/5.0
Chicago: 4.6/5.0
Penn: 4.2/5.0
Columbia: 4.1/5.0
Cornell: 3.9/5.0
Duke: 3.9/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.6/5.0

It seems to me that Michigan is quite respected in Academic Circles and that Columbia although certainly as good as Michigan, is not considered better in academic circles. I would say that unless you believe that LSE is better than Chicago and Columbia in Academic circles, it is not better than Michigan either. The problem here is that you probably respect LSE a little too much and Michigan not quite enough.

3) I am not biased. I grow tired of that baseless accusation. Simply because I defend universities (and I stress universitIES because I will defend any university that is ignorantly or unfairly denigrated, from Cal, Chicago and Cornell to even MIT and Princeton) does not make me biased.

Hatingtonyblair · June 29, 2005, 8:34am

Here’s another extract from an editorial in today’s Daily Mail (a mass circulation UK daily newspaper, not known for its sympathy to universities), again referring to the ID card bust up between the government and LSE:

‘…most people in this country have far more trust in the LSE than they have in any politician.’

In reply to Alexandre’s point: in the social sciences, which is its field after all, LSE is more respected than Oxbridge. In fact in the Times Higher’s league table it ranks second only to Harvard in the whole world for social science. After all it’s LSE that’s making the running in the debate about ID cards in Britain, not Oxbridge. And this is not unusual: LSE publishes reports on a wide variety of issues and they have huge influence at home and abroad.

Hatingtonyblair · June 29, 2005, 8:36am

Nice post, Prepster.

jkh · June 29, 2005, 1:19pm

Even then, the very same Times paper had the following individual subjects rankings for LSE (out of more than 100 universities in UK):

Athropology = 3
Business Studies = 3
Economics = 4
Geography = 2
History = 3
Law = 6
Mathematics = 13
Philosophy = 20
Politics = 18
Psychology = 17
Sociology = 18

This is the latest 2005 rankings, and this ranking methodology has been tested and tried for more than 10 years, unlike its new World Rankings started in 2004. LSE offers only 11 subjects.

I think Alexandre gave a very well balanced, impartial and mature post though.

yahni · June 30, 2005, 11:19am

I think Alexandre has a good point here. LSE may not be as highly regarded as MIT, Satnford, Princeton, Harvard, Oxbridge etc. And its academic standards may not be as good as it used to be (like many other European Universities). However, I still believe that both LSE and Imperial College, London have very prestigious especially for the people in the know. And I would certainly consider these two British schools more prestigious than Michigan (although Michigan is also a fantastic university). Unfortunately, I really cann’ t compare them academically.

system · June 30, 2005, 11:30am

alex, for the concentration-specific assesment ratings, are those grad ratings or undergrad? just wondering

xiggi · June 30, 2005, 1:43pm

“The USNWR Peer assessment score is the collective opionion of the US academic world and according to them, Michigan is at the same level as the schools you claim are better than it. Here are some peer assessment scores:”

Peer assessments are easily the most blatanly manipulated data used by USNews. There is no guarantee whatsoever that the -variable- percentage of surveys that were returned was filled by someone who knows anything about other schools. If you believe that an obscure administrative assistant at Kalamazoo College knows much about the economics department at Chicago … be my guest to pay any attention to the famous “peer” assessment. While USNews publishes some valuable data -the verifiable number-based- the peer assessment is nothing but a jocular popularity contest if not an exercise in geographical cronyism.

"I would say that in academic circles, all of those schools above are pretty equal. Cal, H,M,P,S and Y all get scores of 4.8+, so they are in a league of their own if you ask me.

If you look at how those universities do in more specialized academic circles, you will see that Michigan does in fact belong in that group.

BUSINESS:
Penn: 4.65/5.0
Chicago: 4.45/5.0
Michigan: 4.35/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Duke: 4.2/5.0
Cornell: 4.1/5.0
CalTech and Johns Hopkins do not have B-schools.

POLITICAL SCIENCE:
Michigan: 4.8/5.0
Chicago: 4.3/5.0
Duke: 4.3/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Cornell: 3.8/5.0
Penn: 3.2/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.0/5.0
CalTech is not rated.

ECONOMICS:
Chicago: 5.0/5.0
Penn: 4.5/5.0
Columbia: 4.2/5.0
Michigan: 4.2/5.0
CalTech: 4.0/5.0
Cornell: 4.0/5.0
Duke: 3.7/5.0
Johns Hopkins: 3.6/5.0"

**Humm. Interesting. What is the source of the above rankings? Are they homebrewed? The similarity to USNews is startling … is it by design? **

Hatingtonyblair · June 30, 2005, 6:07pm

Let’s clear a few things up.

1/The consensus of professional and expert opinion for instance is that LSE is the British place for the broad subject field known as social sciences (ie politics, economics, sociology, criminology, anthropology, international relations etc etc, not Oxbridge), just as Oxbridge is in return regarded as the lead place for humanities and even pure sciences. Imperial in turn would be regarded as the place for applied science. Look across a broad range of evidence in different quarters, from novels to biographies to the opinions of experts and you will find this approximate consensus.

Likewise nobody in the professions that are interested in these things would say that Chicago is on a lower plane for subjects like economics or sociology than Princeton or Yale. In fact most of the people who know about these things would say that Chicago is the American place for such teaching and research along perhaps with Harvard. And we’re talking about hugely important subjects involving vast numbers of people with a big influence on governments and cultures.

2/The league table in the daily edition of the Times has been controversial from the start. There are many reasons for this, for example:

a) in its decade of existence (which is a short time in the lifespan of universities) it has consistently changed its criteria and weighting mechanisms, making year on year comparisons very difficult;
b)it frequently uses a spread of easily manipulated and controversial short term indicators that have very little to do with academic quality and which are often highly suspect in themselves ( ie overall income or ‘student destinations’) or which cannot be adequately compared across universities ( ie grades awarded to finalists, given that each university awards its own grades); especially worrying is the reliance on short term indicators and the fact that it has never attempted to quantify long term performance indicators, which many would say are a vital measure of university quality and impact (ie per capita measurements of Nobel Prizes, entrants in Who’s Who, media mentions etc).

c)its individual subject rankings, which have often changed dramatically year on year are not based on close analysis of the scholarship or teaching and studying activity year on year in a department (it would be very difficult for the Times to monitor what happens in each university department each year given that there are over 100 universities in the UK, and the statistics available are very crude and limited - it would take hundreds of reporters who would have the time to do very little else -in any case their reports wouldn’t mean much as university departments rarely change much in their quality in the space of even five years, unlike league tables), nor are they based on entry grades (if they did LSE would come in the top 1-4 in every subject area in which the Times mentions it);

in fact many people are very puzzled as to how the Times arrives at its individual subject rankings, and the handful of people who compile the rankings get very coy when asked about how they add them up and how they give some indicators more credence than others (‘weightings’);

d) the Times has a formal sponsorship and intern scheme with Oxford -this makes it very difficult to claim that it is impartial in judging universities, especially Oxbridge ( Oxford always does very well in the Times table).

3/The Times Higher is an offshoot of the Times which specialises in higher education. Its league table is better than the domestic one because it is compiled by people with more specialist knowledge and it does not rely just on the opinions of a handful of journalists and some hired number crunchers. Most importantly it backs its figures up with an international opinion poll of 1300 academics across the globe -as far as I know the widest ranging such poll in any exercise of this kind -raw figures alone are never enough, and are easily distorted, so the opinions of academics and other opinion formers are important, especially when they come from so many places, and domestic jealousies are therefore diminished. And the international view is what counts in our increasingly globalized environment -in that way crude numbers do matter -there are 6 billion people in the world as opposed to around 60 million in the UK, and lead universities like LSE, Chicago, Harvard and Berkeley are increasingly international in their composition and reach.

4/Of course all league tables are open to question, and on their own they are rarely more than starting points in making judgements - to judge a university you need to know something about what it does in the real world, and the kind of impact it makes.

5/We can see from the examples I’ve cited above that LSE does make that kind of impact. After all it pioneered the social sciences in the UK and then founded the welfare state and then triggered the free market reaction against it. Now it’s a centre of debate on many social issues, month after month, as the media coverage testifies. Not a bad record for a small college in London in just over a hundred years.

Likewise everybody in the social sciences has heard of the Chicago school of sociology and its economics department is probably the most prestigious one on the planet. With respect, there’s nothing to indicate that Michigan has had that sort of resonance.

I would be delighted, Alexandre, if you were to give us some actual information about Michigan’s public profile and influence on the world of scholarship (and I don’t mean the tables in US News and World Report). I mean this genuinely: it’s good that you’re passionate about your university and it will be interesting to see you advance a detailed case for its merits.

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