Philosophy, Politics And Economics: A Booming College Major

Philosophy, Politics and Economics might be the hottest undergraduate degree today. From its beginnings in Oxford in the 1920s, PPE has spread to over 150 universities around the world. What is PPE and why do students today find it so appealing?

Perhaps the original modernizing impulse of PPE can still be felt today. PPE was created in large part to provide future administrators of the British empire with an education somewhat more attuned to the modern world than the previous course of study in Classics. Still, as the Labor peer Stewart Wood, who ran seminars in PPE, was quoted as saying in PPE: The Oxford Degree That Rules Britain, “It does still feel like a course for people who are going to run the Raj in 1936.”

In any case, PPE enjoys the status of having graduated alumni who are highly visible in the world of politics. According to The Oxford Student,“PPE graduates have gone on to rule countries across the globe: four Pakistani PMs and one President, three PMs of Australia, and leaders of Myanmar, Ghana, Peru, and Thailand have all studied PPE at Oxford.”

And in Britain alone, “in the 2014 General Election your choice of PM was effectively a PPE graduate from Brasenose, or a PPE graduate from Corpus Christi.”

Beyond “Rule, Brittania”

And yet PPE has come a long way—or at least some way—from its image as an elitist course for future Prime Ministers. This year, over 600 students at Oxford are studying PPE. Almost 40 universities in the U.K. now offer a version of PPE, as do about 20 in the Commonwealth countries. PPE is well represented at African, Indian and Asian universities. Over 75 universities in the United States, from Adelphi to Yale, offer versions of this interdisciplinary study.

How Interdisciplinary is PPE?

PPE offers students, especially those in the UK, a broader view than that afforded from the typical disciplinary trench. As David Willetts observes in “PPE: The Oxford Degree That Runs Britain”:

“PPE thrives,” says Willetts, a former education minister who is writing a book about universities, “because a problem of English education is too much specialisation too soon, whereas PPE is much closer to the prestigious degrees for generalists available in the United States.”

Adding law to the mix is another way that some programs modelled on the original PPE increase its attraction to young people who aim at a career in some form of public life, but are not ready to specialize. PPEL or PPL manages to mention law without requiring the sometimes-tedious study required to qualify for a license to practice.

Students considered applying for a degree in PPE or PPE+Law are well advised to look beyond the multidisciplinary title. It is up to prospective students to investigate how well the different fields are integrated in the coursework or research requirements for the degree, and whether the range and style of courses suits their needs.

Prestige Plus Career

These days, PPE speaks to a generation of teenagers who are wary of a “useless liberal arts degree but reluctant to commit to a career path before they have even left secondary school.

PPE might be thought to combine the prestige of traditional university education in the liberal arts with a suggestion of an influential future career.

The description of Yale’s major in “Ethics, Politics and Economics” provides an example: “The major in Ethics, Politics and Economics joins the analytic rigor of the social sciences and the enduring normative questions of philosophy to promote an integrative and critical understanding of the institutions, practices, and policies that shape the contemporary world.”

Rigorous, enduring, integrative and critical, appealing to the rising generation’s high ideals of changing the world—preferably from the security of a career in finance— interdisciplinary degrees in the social sciences are booming.

What Does It Take To Get Admitted?

PPE differs greatly from university to university. The entry requirements correspond to what is taught and how it is taught in each program. For example, PPE at Manchester will accept quite a number of different A-level subjects, and International Baccalaureate students may present Standard Level Mathematics.

On the other hand, PPE at The London School of Economics and Political Science is a four-year program that “gives equal weight to all three subjects and has specially designed interdisciplinary courses.” The philosophy component includes formal logic, and economics at LSE is a highly quantitative discipline. Unsurprisingly, the entry requirements include A* in Maths for students doing A-levels and the highest possible grade, namely 7, in Higher Level Mathematics for students presenting the International Baccalaureate.

Most U.S. universities do not admit according to major, so the requirements for admission to study PPE are usually not different from the expectations the university has for admissions generally. Exceptions may be universities that cap admission for certain majors; and universities that admit students to the major only by application after successful completion of certain prerequisites.

An indication of the growing popularity of PPE is the case of Yale, which used to admit students to its Ethics, Politics and Economics major only after a competitive application once they were at Yale. Students would have to accept admission to Yale without knowing whether they would be accepted into the highly-selective EPE major. That has changed, and now Yale admits students directly to EPE.

How To Find Out More

The advantage of PPE, namely that it goes beyond standardized disciplinary norms, can make it difficult to predict what is required or offered by a particular program. Look carefully at the plan for each year and what classes are available. Try to find the syllabus for each class to avoid assumptions about what is meant by, for example, “philosophy.”

Another way to learn more is through student publications. For example, students in the last year of the program at LSE do independent, interdisciplinary research and present their findings at a conference. The best essays are published in the journal, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The articles will showcase the kind of work done in PPE at LSE.

Compelling on its own and a solid foundation for professional graduate training, PPE is the college major of the moment.