Commerce and Economics at the London School of Economics
The London School of Economics was founded in 1895 to teach vocational and commercial subjects to part-time students. By 1920 the majority of students were full-time, studying the London BSc (Econ.) degree that was, however, a general social sciences degree for which very few students pursued the economics major option. The appointment of Lionel Robbins as Professor of Economics in 1929 opened the way for undergraduate teaching at the LSE to be moved towards economics, with staff appointments being made that would further this end. The bulk of the student body, however, continued to pursue a broad social sciences pathway, and it was only by shutting down the BCom degree in the later 1940s that Robbins was eventually able to bring about the shift from a broadly vocational school to one in which ‘modern’ social sciences dominated.