London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw, LSE joined the University of London in 1900 and established its first degree courses under the auspices of the university in 1901.[6] LSE began awarding its degrees in its own name in 2008,[7] prior to which it awarded degrees of the University of London. It became a university in its own right within the University of London in 2022.[8] It has been regarded as one of the world's leading univerisites specialising in the social sciences.[9]
Motto
LSE is located in the London Borough of Camden and Westminster, Central London, near the boundary between Covent Garden and Holborn. The area is historically known as Clare Market. LSE has more than 11,000 students, just under seventy percent of whom come from outside the UK, and 3,300 staff.[10] The university has the sixth-largest endowment of any university in the UK and in 2022/23, it had an income of £466.1 million of which £39.6 million was from research grants.[1] Despite its name, the school is organised into 25 academic departments and institutes which conduct teaching and research across a range of pure and applied social sciences.[10]
LSE is a member of the Russell Group, Association of Commonwealth Universities and the European University Association, and is typically considered part of the "golden triangle" of research universities in the south east of England. The LSE also forms part of CIVICA – The European University of Social Sciences, a network of eight European universities focused on research in the social sciences.[11] In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, the school had the third highest grade point average (joint with Cambridge).[12]
LSE alumni and faculty include 55 past or present heads of state or government and 18 Nobel laureates. As of 2017, 13 out of 49 of all Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economics had been awarded to LSE alumni, current staff, or former staff. LSE alumni and faculty have also won 3 Nobel Peace Prizes and 2 Nobel Prizes in Literature.[13][14] The university has educated the most billionaires (11) of any European university according to a 2014 global census of US dollar billionaires.[15]
National rankings
3
4
4
151–200
45
46
Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy (1996–1998; 2006–2008) and President of the European Commission (1999–2004)
![Lee Kuan Yew[note 1], Prime Minister of Singapore (1959–1990)](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Prime_Minister_Lee_Kuan_Yew_of_Singapore_Making_a_Toast_at_a_State_Dinner_Held_in_His_Honor%2C_1975.jpg/90px-Prime_Minister_Lee_Kuan_Yew_of_Singapore_Making_a_Toast_at_a_State_Dinner_Held_in_His_Honor%2C_1975.jpg)
![Queen Margrethe II of Denmark[note 2] (1972–2024)](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Queen_Magrethe_sep_7_2005.png/97px-Queen_Magrethe_sep_7_2005.png)
![Ursula von der Leyen[note 3], President of the European Commission (2019–present)](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Official_Portrait_of_Ursula_von_der_Leyen.jpg/80px-Official_Portrait_of_Ursula_von_der_Leyen.jpg)
![Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States [note 4]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Anthony_Kennedy_official_SCOTUS_portrait_crop.jpg/96px-Anthony_Kennedy_official_SCOTUS_portrait_crop.jpg)
![Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai[note 5]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/H.H._Sheikh_Hamdan_Bin_Mohammed_Bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum_in_Summit_on_the_Global_Agenda.jpg/92px-H.H._Sheikh_Hamdan_Bin_Mohammed_Bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum_in_Summit_on_the_Global_Agenda.jpg)
LSE in literature and other media[edit]
The London School of Economics has been mentioned and formed the basis of setting for numerous works of fiction and in popular culture. The first notable mention of the LSE was in literature was in the epilogue to Bernard Shaw's 1912 play Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle is sent to the LSE.[246]
In around a dozen other novels, the LSE was mentioned as short-hand for a character being witty and clever but outside the establishment. This is best exhibited by Ian Fleming's CV of James Bond that included the detail that his father, Andrew, is an LSE graduate.[247] These occurrences have continued into contemporary fiction: Lenny is the young 'hip' LSE graduate and criminologist in Jake Arnott's tour of the London underworld in The Long Firm. Robert Harris' Enigma includes Baxter, a code breaker with leftist views, who has been an LSE lecturer before the war and My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru traces the career of Chris Carver aka Michael Frame who travels from LSE student radical to terrorist and on to middle England.[247]
LSE alumna Hilary Mantel, in The Experience of Love, never mentions LSE by name but Houghton Street, the corridors of the LSE Old Building and Wright's Bar are immediately recognisable references to the campus of the school. A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book returns to LSE's Fabian roots with a plot inspired in part by the life of children's writer E. Nesbitt and Fabian Hubert Bland, and characters that choose LSE over older educational establishments (namely Oxford and Cambridge).
On the small screen, the popular 1980s British sitcom Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister make regular references to the LSE with Minister Jim Hacker (later Prime Minister) and Sir Mark Spencer (special advisor to the Prime Minister) regularly being subtly ridiculed for having attended the LSE.[248] A fictional LSE graduate also appears in season three episode six of the US series, Mad Men.[248] The popular American series The West Wing following the Democratic administration of Josiah (Jed) Barltet makes several references to Josiah Bartlet being an alumnus of the LSE.[248] Other fictional LSE alumni are present in Spooks, at least one episode of The Professionals and The Blacklist series.
In movies and motion pictures, in the 2014 action spy thriller Shadow Recruit, the young Jack Ryan, based on a Tom Clancy character, proves his academic credentials by walking out of the Old Building as he graduates from the LSE before injuring his spine being shot down in Afghanistan.[248] The LSE is acknowledged in The Social Network naming the institution along with Oxford and Cambridge universities in a reference to the rapid growth Facebook enjoyed both within and outside the United States in its early years.
