What can you tell me about PPE at uni?

[Lordoftheties]

Hi I'm a regular poster but name change frequently to try and keep anonymous.
First child is now sorted and off to uni so starting to think about the second who will be applying next year. He's doing Economics, Maths and Spanish.
He has been talking about PPE - can anyone tell me about it? In my head it really only has a reputation for being what future Tory MPs do at Oxford - which doesn't make me think positively about it.
But I'm sure there are normal people who study and enjoy it - have any of your children studied it? Where? What did they think? How much philosophy is in it? The 3 subjects in the title seem to me (a scientist who's never studied any of these things) to be an odd mix (I get economics and politics going together but not all 3).
He's interested in economics but I'm not sure he'd enjoy economics on its own (I might be wrong) and the A level requirements look very high. In case it's relevant i would expect his predictions to be in the region of A * A A.
Thank you in advance.

I hope you find your answer but I thought this was going to be about gloves and masks : Covid PPE.

Ha I should have thought of that! I did a search to see if there were previous similar posts but everything was about covid PPE when I searched. 🤔.

I don't have all the answers to your questions, but I just wanted to answer the bit about philosophy. I studied just politics, but there was a lot of Political Theory that overlaps hugely with philosophy and ethics. We read Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, St Augustine... as politics is all about who gets what, where, when and how as well as theories on how society is (or could be) structured, philosophy is very closely linked to politics. I certainly had more philosophy in my politics degree than economics.

Like @lifeissweet I studied politics (political science) at university. My course included a lot of theory which overlaps with philosophy. So you look at questions of the nature of political consent and social contract theory. This is all very helpful if you want to understand political systems and how / why they work.

I didn't study economics beyond GCSE and really wish I had. It would be really helpful to have a good understanding of the area. I actually work in the political sphere these days and it would be useful to me even now.

Ds1 is looking at it too. Most courses are quite economics heavy, most involve a lot of maths and most don't “combine” very well ie you’re effectively splitting your time between three subjects and just taking modules in those alongside the single honours students. They’re not taught as a cohesive whole if you see what I mean.

Having been to a few open days I’m trying to steer ds into a slightly different direction. Why don’t you suggest economics with a language?

I did Politics and Economics at university but I did philosophy as part of that. Political thought is a result of political philosophy, but there are other branches of philosophy as well. It’s a very interesting degree however politics is also quite history based and there is a lot of theory, and you need to pick economics courses carefully according to how mathematical you are.

Other options to look at might be Combined Social Sciences or Liberal Arts.

It's not just Tory politicians who study PPE it's studied by people of every political hue, folks who want to do journalism etc. It's a very well regarded and competitive course to get into at Oxbridge or LSE. It's really just acknowledging that you can't really understand Political theory without understanding philosophy and economics too - as most recent ideological persuasions are based on assumptions about the economy.

It's a good course to do if they can get an offer and the grades. Of course it's not strictly vocational like other humanities subjects.

Thanks all.
I definitely would like him to do economics with Spanish. I think it would be useful and probably easier to get on the course as well. At the moment I'm not steering at all as it's very early days for us (only just starting year 12) but hopefully he'll decide that for himself.
That's really interesting about the course not being taught in a cohesive way. I think that he would prefer a more structured approach so that's helpful to know
He's good at maths but he doesn't love maths. He does love economics though in terms of the theory and ideas.
I think he's going to really need to look into the detail of all the courses to see which ones excite him.

He might find the BA Economics courses at e.g. Manchester or Goldsmiths interesting?

DD is about to go into her 2nd year of PPE. She has absolutely no ambition to become a tory MP, although she can spot the ones who probably will.

She imagined that she would drop phil asap, but she loves it. Her university offers joint honours in Phil with physics, maths, CompSci & theology. Some of the logic module she took last year was weirdly mathematical. She's going to take modules in ethics and some classical phil this year.

She took maths, history & Eng language at A level. Her university recommends that PPE applicants take maths & history. I think she would have struggled far more without either. The courses all assume you have zero knowledge. OUP do a series of "A very short introduction to..." books and she was advised to read the 3 on basic P, P & E before applying.

Warwick integrates all 3 subjects between the modules. DD would have put that as her insurance, but there was no wriggle room on their AAA* offers. That's the standard offer from most of the top unis. York & Durham make contextual offers to some students to reduce the grades needed.

Durham also do PPE and ask for Maths and a humanity but their list is broader than Oxfords .

Warwick and York have PPE depts and specific modules for PPE students. So there are options where the PPE students have a specific co-ordinated course.