Talk:London School of Economics

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

London School of Economics was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 26, 2011	Good article nominee	Not listed

Text or other creative content from London School of Economics was copied or moved into History of the London School of Economics with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Higher education

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Education in the United Kingdom (inactive)

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Terms

The terms "Michaelmas Term" and "Lent Term" were changed starting from 23/24 academic year, to simply "Autumn Term", "Winter Term" and "Spring Term". Thepowerandtheglory (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. If you have access to a reference for this, please update the article and cite the reference. Robminchin (talk) 20:22, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Size of the notable people section

The notable people section for this article is summarising a WP:SPLIT article, List of people associated with the London School of Economics . As such, per the guidelines at WP:SPLIT, the summary should usually be "a couple of paragraphs and one image". Similarly, WP:UNIGUIDE says of the 'notable people' section that:

This section should give a sense of the extent to which persons with well-known deeds or highly significant accomplishments are or have been associated with the school (as by attendance there or by being on staff or faculty). For most schools this might take the form of a list of people meeting Wikipedia's notability standards (each with perhaps a very brief descriptive phrase), where such a list would not be excessively long. For very old, very large, or very prestigious schools it may be more appropriate to use categories ("Alumni of", "Faculty of", etc. note that "Alumni" categories are only for former students, including graduates; current students are not considered alumni) instead, limiting the explicit list to very well-known persons (heads of state, historical figures, etc.) and adding a narrative summary of statistics on such things as Nobel Prizes, other prestigious awards, and so on.

Furthermore, there is a gallery of 29 images, which is well beyond that required to illustrate the subject and thus contrary to WP:GALLERY: "Just as we seek to ensure that the prose of an article is clear, precise and engaging, galleries should be similarly well-crafted. Gallery images must collectively add to the reader's understanding of the subject without causing unbalance to an article or section within an article while avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made." The other gallery, for academics and staff, is large at seven images but probably not overly so.

The point of the notable people section is not to include all of the notable people who attended the LSE. As it stands, this section is far larger than it needs to be to summarise the list of LSE people and needs to be cut down to the best known people, following WP:UNIGUIDE and have most of the images removed. Robminchin (talk) 22:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Possible addition regarding a recent analysis of elite university rankings

A recent paper, "Where Did the Global Elite Go to School? Hierarchy, Harvard, Home and Hegemony", Global Networks, (2025; 25:e12509 doi.org/10.1111/glob.12509), presents an analysis of elite university rankings based on the educational backgrounds of the global elite.

Notably, Figure 12 of this paper, which examines the "Betweenness centrality distribution, excluding US nationals," places the LSE second, behind only Harvard University.

Other notable rankings for LSE in the paper:

4th in "Betweenness centrality distribution" (Figure 4)
5th in "Educational background of the global elite, excluding US nationals" (Figure 10)
8th in "Strength degree distribution" (Figure 3)
Approximately 6th-7th in "Strength degree distribution, excluding US nationals" (Figure 11)
7th in "Percentage of times a given university was in the 99th percentile distribution of strength degree, excluding US nationals" (Figure 15B)
10th in "Percentage of times a given university was in the 99th percentile distribution of strength degree, Fall Sample" (Figure 15A)

In Figure 16 ("Educational background of the global elite, by elite role and US national status"), LSE ranks:

3rd for leaders of international organizations
Approximately 4th for US nationals with elite degrees
Approximately 5th for non-US nationals with elite degrees

This information is based on a visual interpretation of the figures, and a more detailed analysis would be possible by examining the supplementary data accompanying the paper.

One potential point to consider before including this in the main article is that this paper does not appear to have been cited in other university Wikipedia articles at this time. However, this could simply be due to the recent publication date and potential oversight.

~~~~ LittleHow (talk) 07:17, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Visitor?

The infobox at the top of this article states that the Lord President of the Council is the visitor of the LSE ex officio, but this is unreferenced and LSE is not listed by the Privy Council Office as one of the institutions to which the Lord President acts as visitor[1], nor is there any mention of a visitor that I can find in the Articles of Association[2] or the byelaws[3]. This seems like something that should be removed as unverifiable (and possibly not true). Robminchin (talk) 21:54, 27 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]