PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain

Oxford University graduates in philosophy, politics and economics make up an astonishing proportion of Britain’s elite. But has it produced an out-of-touch ruling class?

by Andy Beckett

"Regardless, over recent decades two dozen other British universities have set up their own PPE courses: from a more politically adventurous version at Goldsmiths, in which Davies is involved, heavily informed by sociology, anthropology and cultural studies – the sort of course the 1968 Oxford radicals wanted, but never quite got – to a more maths-heavy, technocratic, four-year version at the London School of Economics. The PPE concept has also spread to dozens of universities abroad, from the United States to South Africa and the Netherlands.

But the closest equivalents of Oxford PPE are older: the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, founded under a different name in 1936, and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in France, founded in 1945. Like Oxford PPE, both were attempts to improve government, and both have accumulated enemies as faith in government has soured."