“To know the causes of things”. That’s our motto and in fact it’s the core aim of the new LSE100 course that the School has launched to improve our employment prospects. The logic is that LSE graduates are very skilled in our own fields but employers don’t like our narrowly focused programmes and instead would like us to have broader skills. Thus, if you’re a first year, you now have to take part in the LSE100 course to develop your skills to “think like a social scientist”. Good idea, no?

Well, there seems to be some debate about just how good an idea it is. From the very first week, students have been complaining about the new course and its not surprising, given what the School is trying to do with it.

First and foremost, it feels a little bit like the School is attempting to teach us all the social sciences while teaching us none. While that might sound a little counter-intuitive, bear with me. Because this course is delivered to first years across 37 departments in the school – a total of 1271 students – the course has to be pitched in a way that is accessible to mathematicians and to anthropologists (Is it just me that sees an issue with that principle?). You can’t design a course that fits that many people, all who applied to the LSE with unique expectations about what they want to study. I’ve heard people saying that they feel at some points the course is like a GCSE level subject while others argue they don’t understand an ounce of what’s going on. Moreover, LSE100 counts a whole 0 per cent towards your final degree classification. So whilst you’re sat in the Peacock Theatre, you can be safe in the knowledge that this compulsory fifth module is of no consequence to everything else you do. Then the administration wonders why people are questioning the relevance of the course when not only is it pitched poorly and counts for nothing, but more than that, for most of us, the course overlaps with content already on our respective degree programmes.

Now I’m not going to just sit here writing all the things that I think are wrong with LSE100, because, for what its worth, I actually think it’s a good idea. So instead, let’s get constructive.

Firstly, if you’re going to make me sit a compulsory module, make it a core module as part of my degree programme – don’t tag it on as a fifth and expect me to care about it because it appears on my transcript. Make it worth the effort! Most, if not all students have an outside option available in their first year – swap it for LSE100.

Secondly, because you can’t teach us all at the same level, as I mentioned above, make LSE100 customized for each department so I don’t study the same content twice. In the School’s defense, they’ve given the SSLC an explanation of why the course is designed this way – mostly money and inflexibility of the School as a whole – but whilst these changes might take significant investment, students will soon be paying anywhere up to £9000 as a minimum to study at the LSE – and they should have their money invested in a course designed around them.

Thirdly, get the timing right; don’t make me sit through lectures on writing skills in our sixteenth week of the academic year! I can appreciate why the LSE has timed this module the way that it has – we don’t feel overwhelmed with work in our first term and we don’t get burdened during year two’s exam period. But seriously, giving me a lecture on essay writing – that admittedly could have been pretty useful – when I’ve already finished all my formative work this year, is a little nonsensical. I don’t know about you, but if I haven’t figured out how to write an essay by week sixteen, you may as well book me for a resit now! Of course not everyone takes qualitative subjects so these skills aren’t useful to them right now on the course, but if LSE 100 is designed to boost our skills set, boost it right at the beginning so we can hit the ground running, not 16 weeks too late.

Now I could go on, but I dare say someone will write for the Beaver either commending or condemning my comments and elongating the debate, so instead I’ll leave you on this note: LSE100 is a good idea and a potentially very useful course. But the LSE needs to get serious about this. If it doesn’t, it will be seen as a laughing stock forever more, and they wouldn’t want that – not with all the money they’ve invested in those luxury embossed folders.