Written by Angelica Di Monte
In an interview with LooSE TV, LSE’s student-led television station, President and Vice Chancellor Professor Larry Kramer spoke about artificial intelligence in education, careers, campus food costs, student activism, and the pressures facing British universities under the current government.
The interview, the first in a planned miniseries by LooSE TV, was prompted by a perception among students that they feel disconnected from LSE’s leadership. Kramer expressed a desire for more direct contact with students. LooSE TV is a student-led media and content creation platform that focuses on covering on-campus events and creating content for the LSE student community.
The Value of a University Degree
Asked about growing public scepticism over the value of higher education, Kramer explained that from a financial perspective, tuition fees are justified in that the careers accessible from a higher education degree pay back more than not getting one. He also argued that the university experience offers more than career prospects, especially lessons of citizenship: “To be a citizen in a democratic society, the things that you learn, the interactions that you have, particularly at a place like LSE where they’re going to be with people from all over the world […] that’s really, really critical,” he said.
Educational Adaptation to Artificial Intelligence
On the question of AI in education, Kramer said LSE is “a year or two ahead of almost every other university,” including American ones, and was unambiguous about the fact that “the school is firmly of the view that the answer is not to try and suppress usage, but the opposite […] We should say to students, ‘embrace it for all it’s worth.’” He acknowledged the variation in AI policy across LSE departments: “We’re actually giving departments room to experiment so that we can see what works,” he said, adding that making a single central decision at this stage is unjustified as “we just don’t know enough” about these tools and their evolution. The central concern for Kramer is ensuring that students do not use AI to shortcut the learning process itself. The challenge for LSE, he said, is building assessment structures that allow productive use of AI without enabling students to “cheat themselves”. Kramer also confirmed that AI integration into career support and administrative systems is in progress.
Student Experience: Food Costs and Careers
Kramer also pushed back on the perception that LSE only caters to students headed into finance or consulting. He said that LSE’s Careers team had expressed frustration that their provision beyond finance and consulting is not being communicated effectively to students. He credited career support as a major driver of LSE’s recent rise in UK rankings, while stressing that backing students into less conventional paths is “something I really, really strongly believe” in.
On food affordability on campus, a recurring concern raised by students, Kramer acknowledged he had not yet directly raised it with the relevant team. “I have a check-in later today with them to ask that question,” he said during the interview. He brought up microwaves as an example, and the fact that some departments had resisted installing them. “That should not be an issue,” he said, indicating that central management may have to override departmental decisions on this kind of matter.
His remarks pointed to a recurring issue throughout the interview: the limits of his own authority. “People don’t realise I actually can’t really tell people what to do,” Kramer said. “Being the president of a university isn’t like being the CEO of a corporation. It’s still all by persuasion […] My job is to help facilitate everybody else’s work.” He told students that they can always contact him directly or reach out to LSE’s Estates and Catering team.
Student Experience: Diversity
On religious inclusion, Kramer mentioned LSE’s Faith Centre as working hard to meet students’ spiritual and worship needs, noting that representatives from each of the major religious groups are employed there directly. He also explained that the main challenge is that with a student body that turns over annually, the needs raised one year may be entirely different the next. “It’s a kind of constant adapting and adjusting,” he said, “not so much to religious differences as to differences in the people and what they think they need on campus”.
Student Activism and Divestment
The interview touched on student activism and the ongoing controversy over LSE’s ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investment policy, which followed a year-long review process that was poorly received by parts of the student body and by faculty members.
Kramer defended the process, citing five or six town halls, written submissions from students, workshops, a group set up to give feedback, and direct access to LSE Council. “You couldn’t have asked for either a fuller or more transparent process than the one we actually had,” he explained. With respect to divestment, he was clear in his belief that divestment decisions are not democratic. “It’s not a popularity vote. The council has a fiduciary responsibility because the consequences of the choices […] are not felt by the students and faculty today. They’re felt by students and faculty in the future.” He acknowledged that some other universities have taken a different position, and said LSE would revisit its stance if its judgments about consequences prove to be wrong.
On free speech and activism more broadly, Kramer said LSE provides as good an environment as any institution he has worked in for people to explore and push their ideas. However, he raised a concern about certain student activists seeking to silence opposing views. “The answer to profound disagreement isn’t to shut down or exclude people who have the other views, but to engage with them,” he said.
UK Politics and University Education
When asked about the impact of UK political fragmentation and the rise of parties such as Reform UK on LSE, Kramer warned that if British politics follows the trajectory seen in the United States and elsewhere, “everything will get harder for us”. “Even the current Labour government has been extremely bad for higher education,” he said, arguing that universities are politically easy targets because they lack a broad political constituency willing to defend them. Consequently, it is easier for the government to impose costs on universities to make a political statement. He used restrictions on international student visas as an example: “You want to make a statement about immigration, make it harder for foreign students to come to study in the UK. That’s easier than actually dealing with the hard immigration issues.”
He said a key part of his role is working to reduce LSE’s dependence on government funding, in order to insulate the school from political volatility.
The full interview is available on Loose TV’s Instagram page and YouTube channel.
