Abstract
Despite Bacon’s views on the benefit of knowledge, students, who are generally presumed to be seeking it, receive a mixed literary and cultural press, which is almost as bad as that for academics. The various students in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as told by the Miller and the Reeve, were devious scatological pranksters and sexually opportunistic; the Wife of Bath’s student fifth husband was a wife-beater and wife-tormenter, though she did think that he made up for this in other ways. The two students in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat were practical jokers. Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, albeit then an ex-student, was a murderer, even if one claiming to be acting by a moral principle, The Student Prince operetta involves very little studying and, despite a complex plot, is principally famous for its frivolity; ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ may be a lament for the shortness of life but is largely known as a student drinking song. There are a few alternatives, though often tragic or ambiguous. Hamlet might have had a different fate had he not been dissuaded by his mother from his wish to return to study at Wittenberg. Hardy’s Jude Fawley, though merely a would-be a student, met with tragedy and death. The moral ambiguity about imposing blame for the student or for the professor for the relationship between them as presented in David Mamet’s Oleana was noted before; one interpretation blames the student. Even the student experience of H. G. Wells’ Ann Veronica in his 1909 eponymous novel was perhaps bitter-sweet. Also, just as there are Oxford novels satirizing the donnish staff for their peculiar customs, there are others satirizing the equally peculiar customs of the students, of which Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson: Or, An Oxford Love Story is perhaps one of the best-known. Bringing these thoughts uncomfortably closer to home, LSE Sociology itself (albeit in the form of a student whose attendance would from the context have been very ephemeral) also receives its own scornful mention; in the midst of his mysterious biographical hinterland, Lee Sarason, the unscrupulous secretary of the authoritarian populist Senator Berzelius Windrip, and later his Secretary of State who then engineered a coup d’état, in Sinclair Lewis’s disturbing 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, ‘had a few sociological months at the London School of Economics’. Even so, in comparison with Oxbridge, LSE has been able to escape too many scabrous literary treatments.
‘All knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.’
Francis Bacon , The Advancement of Learning, Book 1, Chapter 1 (1605)
This chapter had been compiled from accessible and available records. The LSE Archives contain numerous files on degree matters that refer to individual students and degree programmes, but six of these files, covering variously between them 1950 to 1989, are closed for reasons of confidentiality.
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Notes
- 1.
In recognition of the normal time of the academic year for undergraduate completions, single years in the context of this chapter refer to the second part of a conventional academic year. Thus, 1907 refers to the academic year 1906–07. A longer period such as 2005–09, for example, is the academic year 2004–05 to that of 2008–09 inclusive.
- 2.
This was Gertrude Williams (Lady Williams) (1897–1983), who was at Bedford College from 1919 and became Professor of Social Economics there from 1955 to 1964.
- 3.
The 1920s were a particularly difficult era for the career prospects of women graduates in the social sciences and the School commissioned its own report on the subject; see Report of an enquiry into openings, with special reference to graduates of the London School of Economics (LSE Archives, Ref. MISC 419). It was conducted between February and May 1924 by Elizabeth Annie Hill Pearson (later, McKenzie ), who had been awarded a Second Class Honours BSc(Econ), Special Subject Sociology, degree in 1923 and was employed as a Rockefeller Research Assistant from 1924 to 1926.
- 4.
Loch Scholarships were awarded from 1913 from the income of a publicly anonymous donation of £1250 for a student pursuing the Certificate course in the Department of Social Science and Administration . Named Loch Exhibitions from 1915, they were intended to recognize the name of Sir Charles Stewart Loch , who – as told in Chapter 1 – was the long-time Secretary of the Charity Organization Society and had also been instrumental in the establishment of the School of Sociology and Social Economics.
- 5.
The standard publication of the BSc(Econ) results in the School Calendars did not identify the Special Subject concerned until 1983; graduates between 1907 and 1935 were all identified from the LSE Register or its three annual supplements.
- 6.
With two puzzling exceptions, one in 1927 and the other in 1929, the BA (Honours) degree always divided Second class between Upper and Lower divisions – puzzling because Bedford College for Women’s awards of the same degree also within the University of London acknowledged the division between Upper and Lower Second from its first year of award, 1927. The BSc(Econ) results distinguished Upper and Lower Seconds only from 1935.
- 7.
Letter from Thomas Simey to Lady Williams , Chair of the University of London Board of Studies in Sociology, 31 July 1956 (Senate House Library, Minute Books of the Board of Studies in Sociology, AC 8/61/1/2).
- 8.
Letter from Michael Banton to Jean Floud, 15 May 1996 (Copy kindly supplied by Michael Banton ).
- 9.
Full comparative data are not easy to find. Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA] data show that in 2008–09 19.8 per cent of all students full-time in all first-degree courses in UK higher-education institutions were classified as black minority-ethnic, of whom 53.5 per cent were female, meaning that 10.6 per cent of these students overall were black minority-ethnic females (HESA 2010, calculated from Table 10a). Subject-level breakdowns by ethnicity are not immediately available and in any case the HESA category of ‘social studies’ includes subjects other than sociology sensu stricto.
- 10.
χ 2 = 13.26; p < 0.01; φ = 0.207. The difference in Firsts also favouring men in 1930–39 deserves mention but, considering only Firsts against all other classifications, it is not conventionally statistically significant.
- 11.
Anstey’s relation to Hobhouse was at best equivocal, though he praised Westermarck , in an article that he wrote about the invasion of the ‘young science of Sociology’ by nostrums from psychology to produce an incestuous ‘social psychology’; he was equally scathing about the ‘oppressive patronage of the Biologists’ (Anstey 1911).
- 12.
There are several references to his presence there. One is by Powell and Gribble (1919, p. 31), where he is indeed described as being among the ‘pro-German’ group of prisoners; see also www.ruhleben.com/id9.html (accessed on 4 February 2017). Of course, as described in Chapter 2, Marshall was interned in Ruhleben throughout the First World War.
- 13.
This work, titled The condition of clerical labour in Britain, was, like the earlier thesis, a Marxist analysis emphasizing the alleged proletarianizing effects of mechanization – a position from which David Lockwood’s later Weberian analysis very much demurred; see Lockwood (1989 [1958], p. 94). The issue of the status of the ‘black-coated worker’ (a term with the noun ‘worker’ seemingly first used by Klingender ) was a significant issue in the 1930s, especially in Germany (see Kracauer 1971 [1930]; Rössiger 1930; Gewerkschaftsbund der Angestellten 1931; Grünberg 1932). Note also the novel of Hans Fallada, Kleiner Mann – Was Nun?, first published in 1932. Other relevant German authors are Theodor Geiger, Hans Speier (see Speier 1934) and Carl Dreyfuss . Klingender introduced some of these authors to the awareness of British sociology. Their American successor is, of course, C. Wright Mills. Kracauer (1971 [1930], p. 81) is a classic early statement that clerical workers are actually part of the proletariat but suffer from a false consciousness of their true class position.
- 14.
In 2012, after the departure of various earlier staff members, the Cities Programme was Francine Tonkiss as its Director, one Lecturer, one Research Fellow, and an administrator.
- 15.
χ2 = 16.06; p < 0.001; φ = 0.083.
- 16.
χ2 = 7.14; p < 0.05; φ = 0.107.
- 17.
χ2 = 10.51; p < 0.01; φ = 0.106.
- 18.
χ2 = 6.44; p < 0.05; φ = 0.173.
- 19.
χ2 = 9.00; p < 0.01; φ = 0.098.
- 20.
χ2 = 10.37; p < 0.01; φ = 0.067.
- 21.
He is not to be confused with Arthur Frank Burns (1904–87), who was Chair of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978.
- 22.
Attempts to discover Rockow’s death date have been unsuccessful, despite extensive searches.
- 23.
After his MSc(Econ), Stigant enrolled for a PhD in Anthropology, initially under Malinowski and later Ginsberg and Blackburn, on the social control of aggression, though his wartime duties as a senior Admiralty cartographer with a knowledge of Japanese meant that he was excused further attendance in 1940.
- 24.
Letter from University of London Press to J. Martin White , 15 July 1924 (LSE Archives, CENTRAL FILING REGISTRY/408 (Box 0386) J. Martin White , Esquire).
- 25.
That Wells’ DSc submission was examined by, among others, Ginsberg , was about the closest he actually came to academic sociology. Although a founder member of the Sociological Society, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he always wore his sociology very lightly. In his voluminous first autobiography (Wells 1934) there is no mention of sociology, or of the Sociological Society, or of any of its foundation stalwarts. True, he contributed to some early discussions in the Society, including being a critical respondent to a paper by Karl Pearson on eugenics (a subject on which he was well equipped to make a contribution, as he had a First in Zoology from the University of London) (Wells 1904), and on 26 February 1906 he presented a talk to the Society in LSE on ‘the so-called science of sociology’ (Wells 1906; Renwick 2012, p. 164), which was a plea for the recognition of individuality against an attempt to establish general laws and which roused some ire from Benjamin Kidd. Wells was on the Council of the Sociological Society in 1905 but no longer in 1906.
- 26.
The file with the relevant information is held in the University of London Library (University of London, Senate House Library, EC 6/1).
- 27.
LSE Archives, Student file of Jal Feerose Bulsara .
- 28.
Pearl Moshinsky (1909–41) married the LSE economics graduate, Samuel Goldman (1912–2007), in 1933, but died at the young age of thirty-two of post-operative complications.
- 29.
Efforts to trace Lee in China were successful to the extent of locating a photograph of him from his Tsinghua University graduation yearbook.
- 30.
Extensive efforts to trace Lang through Chinese sources were unsuccessful.
- 31.
As with Kwei-Di Lang, extensive efforts to trace Margulius through various sources were unsuccessful.
- 32.
Its full title was to have been ‘The Historical and Analytical Treatment of Certain Assumptions Underlying the Socialist Movement, with Special Reference to Present Developments in England’.
- 33.
Agenda item of the LSE Professorial Council, 2 June 1909 (LSE Professorial Council, Agenda and Minutes, 1902–1914; LSE Archives, LSE/Minutes/7/1/1).
- 34.
Her preferred alternative supervisor, according to Lodge , was Graham Wallas. No independent source for Wallas ever having been a possibility has been located, either in Fry’s book, which is probably the fullest account of Amber’s life, or in Wells ’ book or in Beatrice Webb’s diaries of the time – all sources used by Lodge upon which he very extensively relied.
- 35.
Ghurye was not the only example of what could be Hobhouse’s aversive effect. MacRae told of Talcott Parsons, who was at LSE in 1924–25 to follow Hobhouse , was disappointed and turned for inspiration instead to Tawney and so to German sociology (Interview of Donald G. MacRae by David Martin, 2 January 1991; LSE Archives, LSE/LSE Oral History/1/22, pp. 3–4). Parsons had wanted a PhD registration when he applied but was told that he could not be enrolled immediately for that and so entered the General Full Course and took a number of LSE courses, including some in Sociology. However, he received no LSE qualification.
- 36.
Letter from Ghurye to the Secretary of the Board of Research Studies, 17 December 1922 (File of G. S. Ghurye, Special Collections, Cambridge University Library).
- 37.
Letter from Ghurye to Geddes, 14 December 1921 (University of Strathclyde Archives & Special Collections, Patrick Geddes Papers, T-GED/9/1526).
- 38.
Shils, in a book that dramatically fails to effect the distinction between criticism and condescension, is generally dismissive of Indian sociology and does not mention Ghurye (Shils 1961, p. 112).
- 39.
There were some exceptions; by 1950 there were, for example, part-sociology departments in India and South Africa, where some of the instruction would have been in English. There was also McGill University in Montreal in francophone Quebec, where the instruction was in English.
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Table W6.1
Winners of the Hobhouse Memorial Prize and of the Free Press Prize in Sociology, with degree and class received, 1931 to 2015 (DOCX 21 kb)
Table W6.2
Identified Master of Arts in Sociology degrees awarded at LSE, 1931 to 1936 (DOCX 13 kb)
Table W6.3
Identified Masters of Science in Economics awarded in Sociology or Sociology/Anthropology, 1935 to 1938 (DOCX 13 kb) (DOCX 12 kb)
Table W6.4
Advanced doctoral degrees in Sociology or Sociology with Anthropology, 1912 to 1943 (DOCX 13 kb)
Table W6.5
Identified Doctorates of Philosophy in Sociology or in relevant cognate subjects, 1929 to 1940 (DOCX 18 kb)
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Husbands, C.T. (2019). LSE Sociology Students: Their Performances and Achievements. In: Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1904–2015. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89450-8_6
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