by Liv Kessler
Illustration by Charlie To
LSE students are experiencing first-hand the marketisation of universities. Taking corporations as a model, universities have become obsessed with their brand and image, as products for future investment. Indeed, a direct link could be drawn between poor student experience and increasing marketisation – a link which is particularly apparent at LSE, where student satisfaction has always been notoriously low.
Marketisation was made especially clear in the 2022 Lent Term town hall. On paper, this was an opportunity for LSE students to meet and converse with the full board of directors. However, to me, it revealed why new management was brought to LSE and what they have sought out to build: a corporation. They are simply here to improve the school’s image and capitalise on it. I didn’t know at the time, but this was only the second town hall LSE had organised, the first being in the Lent term of 2020, only a few weeks before from the first national lockdown. The novelty of these meetings show that new ways of interacting with students were being brought to LSE. Even then, I don’t think they were really listening to us.
In reality, this town hall gave LSE management a chance to shift the blame and reject the systemic nature of the issues students wanted to address. This was particularly apparent in the Management’s response to the discussion centred around strikes – deemed a ‘risky’ subject. The topic was instead treated almost entirely from the perspective of student compensation, a largely impossible project. This created the additional issue of moving the conversation away from targeting the more systemic issue protested – i.e. fair and equitable hiring practices.
Management’s focus on marketisation is further made clear by their similarly superficial focus in the realm of mental health. One new initiative of the past Summer Term was Mental Health Week, which boasted a series of events like pottery classes and promoted LSE’s mental health services – a school bus of fun. They even brought puppies in front of the library. Along with those awful “You’ve got this” posters in the library, these initiatives (the town hall, Mental Health week) are a part of Management’s larger goal to show that they support students beyond academics. The problem is that these changes are ultimately ineffective in combating the lack of support for students struggling with mental illness.
I believe that LSE has a particular place in the marketisation of universities: the people who shape the school from the top come from corporate backgrounds themselves. To understand this, one needs to look no further than our director. In 2017, Baroness Minouche Shafik was appointed as Director of LSE, with a new managerial vision. For context, Baroness Shafik has had an impressive career prior to her work at LSE. She has crafted a reputation as a breaker of glass ceilings, an innovator, a modern woman of the world. As pointed out in her official LSE directorate page, ”by the age of 36, (she) had become the youngest ever Vice President of the World Bank.” Her last job before becoming LSE director was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Though she has taught at various universities, including Georgetown University in Washington DC, the bulk of her career was made in the corporate world of international institutions.
This was something I could sense at the Town Hall. In many ways it felt like a corporate conference, generously made accessible to its lower level employees. The faraway stage, the many rows of (mostly empty) chairs and the towering screen above us all felt like what I imagine company-wide conferences to be, as opposed to a platform for collaborative discussions. It seems that Minouch’s presence has translated into these new initiatives. These in turn help boost faltering student satisfaction ratings and improve LSE’s overall University ranking. As noted in an article posted on the school website, the rates of student satisfaction have been steadily rising since its low in 2018. The fact being that student quality of life within the university doesn’t need to improve at a deeper level for the rating to go up. Rather than making expensive, but necessary, investments for the minorities who need it most, LSE is superficially investing in the majority of its students.
Another aspect of the image driven obsession are projects like the Marshall Building. Shiny new buildings are much easier to market to the world than a sufficiently pensioned sociology department. The prioritisation of superficial, but expensive, material improvements to the school often comes at the expense of long term investment in academics, students, and their voices.
The increased involvement of the LSE directorate in the lives of their students can be seen as a way to improve this much sought student satisfaction. However, my problem with many of these changes is that rather than addressing systemic issues, they perform change in student life. It’s much easier to post on social media about how wonderful LSE is for having a Mental Health Week, than to provide sufficient funding to the LSE Disability and Wellbeing Service. This shift is profoundly changing what students expect of their university and how their needs are met. Instead of being provided with an education, we are being provided with an academic experience.
