Mindless? Not LSE

Just like Pat Brady (Letters, August 25), I have trouble getting my head round the idea that the most intelligent people on the planet are prepared to subject themselves to hours of "mindless exercises" at the London School of Economics.

As a lecturer for some seven years at the LSE, I teach at the coalface delivering the so-called mindless exercises to some of the best international students. The exercises we deliver are very relevant real-life problems that are up-to-date and improve the employability of our students. If the exercises are mindless, surely there would have been a student uprising because our students are certainly not backwards in coming forwards.

While London Metropolitan University may be good at training communications students (I wonder why Cambridge University recently refused to accept media studies as an A-level combination?), the LSE is good at training economists, actuaries and accountants. They are both in very different markets. No milk rounds happen, to the best of my knowledge, at London Metropolitan, while employers queue to have milk rounds at the LSE. Perhaps employers know a good thing when they see one.

Bala Balachandran
London School of Economics