LSE’s distance-learning network reached students across Britain and the Empire

Evidence

Alongside its regular daytime students there were also evening students for whom teaching was duplicated. In addition, as part of the University of London, the school offered its curriculum and courses to corresponding students throughout Britain and the Empire. Arnold Plant also ran a well-funded Commerce Degree Bureau that coordinated distance learning though the circulation of teaching materials and the marking of student essays by LSE staff. The school’s pedagogic reach was therefore far greater than that of Oxford, Cambridge, or even Manchester and was aimed at a wider constituency. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 402

Categorization

• QUESTION: How unusual was a distance-education bureau in 1930s British academia? This seems early for such infrastructure.
• XREF: connects to: LSE’s pedagogic reach made its simple economic principles influential across Britain — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 402