Philosophy, politics and economics


Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics, is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in PPE was the University of Oxford in the 1920s. This particular course has produced a significant number of notable graduates, including world leaders, journalists, and Nobel Peace Prize winners.
In the 1980s, the University of York went on to establish its own PPE degree based upon the Oxford model; King's College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, and other British universities later followed. According to the BBC, the Oxford PPE "dominate public life" in the UK. It is now offered at several other leading colleges and universities around the world. More recently Warwick University and King's College added a new degree under the name of PPL with the aim to bring an alternative to the more classical PPE degrees.
In the United States, it is offered by over 50 colleges and universities, including four Ivy League schools and a large number of public universities, including The University of Akron. Harvard University began offering a similar degree in Social Studies in 1960, combining history, political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology. In 2020, in addition to its undergraduate degree programs in PPE, Virginia Tech joined the Chapman University's Smith Institute as among the first research centers in the world dedicated to interdisciplinary research in PPE. Several PPE programs exist in Canada, including the Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mount Allison University. In Asia, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Waseda University, NUS, Tel-Aviv University and Ashoka University are among those that have PPE or similar programs.
In recent years, notably in civil law countries, Politics, Philosophy, Law and Economics has been on the rise as a broader version of PPE.

History

Philosophy, politics and economics was established as a degree course at the University of Oxford in the 1920s, as a modern alternative to classics for those entering the civil service. It was thus initially known as "modern greats". The first PPE students commenced their course in the autumn of 1921. The regulation by which it was established is Statt. Tit. VI. Sect. 1 C; "the subject of the Honour School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics shall be the study of the structure, and the philosophical and economic principles, of Modern Society." Initially it was compulsory to study all three subjects for all three years of the course, but in 1970 this requirement was relaxed, and since then students have been able to drop one subject after the first year – most do this, but a minority continue with all three.
The philosopher Roy Bhaskar, who studied PPE at Oxford in the 1960s, subsequently described the course content at that time as follows:
During the 1960s some students started to critique the course from a left-wing perspective, culminating in the publication of a pamphlet, The Poverty of PPE, in 1968, written by Trevor Pateman, who argued that it "gives no training in scholarship, only refining to a high degree of perfection the ability to write short dilettantish essays on the basis of very little knowledge: ideal training for the social engineer". The pamphlet advocated incorporating the study of sociology, anthropology and art, and to take on the aim of "assist the radicalisation and mobilisation of political opinion outside the university". According to Andy Beckett, in response, some minor changes were made, with influential leftist writers such as Frantz Fanon and Régis Debray being added to politics reading lists, but the core of the programme remained the same. However, Bhaskar, another leader of the movement to reform PPE, argued that within a couple of years of the publication of the critique, "...the structure of PPE had been transformed. You could now do sociology, you could do Hegel, you could do Marx, continental philosophy, and these were permanent effects at the Oxford undergraduate level".
Christopher Stray has pointed to the course as one reason for the gradual decline of the study of classics, as classicists in political life began to be edged out by those who had studied the modern greats.
Political theorists Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk have described the course as being fundamental to the development of political thought in the UK since it established a connection between politics and philosophy. Previously at Oxford, and for some time subsequently at Cambridge, politics had been taught only as a branch of modern history.

Course material

The programme is rooted in the view that to understand social phenomena one must approach them from several complementary disciplinary directions and analytical frameworks. In this regard, the study of philosophy is considered important because it both equips students with meta-tools such as the ability to reason rigorously and logically, and facilitates ethical reflection. The study of politics is considered necessary because it acquaints students with the institutions that govern society and help solve collective action problems. Finally, studying economics is seen as vital in the modern world because political decisions often concern economic matters, and government decisions are often influenced by economic events. The vast majority of students at Oxford drop one of the three subjects for the second and third years of their course. Oxford now has more than 600 undergraduates studying the subject, admitting over 200 each year.

Academic opinions

Oxford PPE graduate Nick Cohen and former tutor Iain McLean consider the course's breadth important to its appeal, especially "because British society values generalists over specialists". Academic and Labour peer Maurice Glasman noted that "PPE combines the status of an elite university degree – PPE is the ultimate form of being good at school – with the stamp of a vocational course. It is perfect training for cabinet membership, and it gives you a view of life". However, he also noted that it had an orientation towards consensus politics and technocracy. According to Bhaskar, the course "was designed to turn you into a top-class civil servant, able to turn your hand to any brief or service the empire in a variety of roles".
Geoffrey Evans, an Oxford fellow in politics and a senior tutor, critiques that the Oxford course's success and consequent over-demand is a self-perpetuating feature of those in front of and behind the scenes in national administration, in stating "all in all, it's how the class system works". In the current economic system, he bemoans the unavoidable inequalities besetting admissions and thereby enviable recruitment prospects of successful graduates. The argument itself intended as a paternalistic ethical reflection on how governments and peoples can perpetuate social stratification.
Stewart Wood, a former adviser to Ed Miliband who studied PPE at Oxford in the 1980s and taught politics there in the 1990s and 2000s, acknowledged that the programme has been slow to catch up with contemporary political developments, saying that "it does still feel like a course for people who are going to run the Raj in 1936... In the politics part of PPE, you can go three years without discussing a single contemporary public policy issue". He also stated that the structure of the course gave it a centrist bias, due to the range of material covered: "...most students think, mistakenly, that the only way to do it justice is to take a centre position".

List of offering universities

United Kingdom

England

  • Birkbeck, University of London
  • Durham University
  • Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Keele University
  • King's College London
  • Kingston University
  • Lancaster University
  • London School of Economics
  • The Open University
  • Royal Holloway, University of London
  • SOAS University of London
  • University College London
  • University of Buckingham
  • New College of the Humanities at Northeastern
  • University of East Anglia
  • University of Essex
  • University of Exeter
  • University of Hull
  • University of Leeds
  • University of Liverpool
  • University of Loughborough
  • University of Manchester
  • University of Nottingham
  • University of Oxford
  • University of Reading
  • University of Sheffield
  • University of Southampton
  • University of Sussex
  • University of Warwick
  • University of Winchester
  • University of York

    Scotland

  • University of Aberdeen
  • University of Edinburgh
  • University of the Highlands and Islands
  • University of Stirling

    Wales

  • Swansea University

    Northern Ireland

  • Queen's University Belfast

    Canada

  • Mount Allison University
  • Queen's University
  • The King's University
  • University of British Columbia
  • University of Regina
  • University of Western Ontario
  • Wilfrid Laurier University

    United States

  • Arizona State University
  • Austin College
  • Belmont Abbey College
  • Binghamton University
  • Bowie State University
  • Bowling Green State University
  • Boyce College
  • Bridgewater State University
  • Calvin University
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • Carroll University
  • Claremont McKenna College
  • Cornell University
  • Criswell College
  • Dallas Baptist University
  • Dartmouth College
  • Denison University
  • Drexel University
  • Duke University
  • Eastern Oregon University
  • Elon University
  • Emory & Henry College
  • Florida State University
  • George Mason University
  • Georgia State University
  • Indiana University of Pennsylvania
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Juniata College
  • La Salle University
  • Liberty University
  • Mercer University
  • Minnesota State University, Mankato
  • Mount St. Mary's University
  • Murphy Institute
  • Northeastern University
  • Northwest Nazarene University
  • Ohio Northern University
  • Ohio State University
  • Ottawa University
  • Palm Beach Atlantic University
  • Pomona College
  • Rhodes College
  • Rutgers University–New Brunswick
  • Seattle Pacific University
  • Siena Heights University
  • Spring Hill College
  • St. John's University
  • State University of New York at Oswego
  • Suffolk University
  • Swarthmore College
  • Taylor University
  • Texas Tech University
  • Transylvania University
  • University of Akron
  • University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • University of Arizona
  • University at Buffalo
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • University of California, Irvine
  • University of Florida
  • The University of Idaho
  • University of Iowa
  • The University of Louisville
  • University of Maryland
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Minnesota Morris
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • University of Notre Dame
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of Pittsburgh
  • University of Richmond
  • University of Rochester
  • University of San Diego
  • University of Sioux Falls
  • University of Southern California
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Washington Bothell
  • University of Washington Tacoma
  • University of Wisconsin Political Economy, Politics and Philosophy
  • Utah State University
  • Villanova University
  • Virginia Tech
  • Wabash College
  • Wesleyan University
  • Western Washington University
  • Wheaton College
  • Wheeling University
  • Xavier University
  • Yale University