Obama hearts LSE

According to the Financial Times, Obama’s incoming team has more graduates from the London School of Economics than any other university.  Three out of 15 incoming cabinet members and senior White House staff earned degrees here at the LSE.  A pretty good ratio, and more than Harvard, Yale, Princeton or MIT.  Seems that Old England is beating New England in representation of academic training.

Also notable of course that the switch across the Atlantic favours LSE, not Oxford or Cambridge.  With just 15 days to go until the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise, which ranks UK universities based on their research output, is published, this piece of news will surely excite those that care about the LSE’s capacity to influence policy as well as the ivory tower.  I’m just happy to see that this is just another way that Obama makes the dream of Jed Bartlet‘s West Wing come true.  The fictional ex-president Barlet of course received his PhD from the LSE.